Yesterday I outlined a few initial storylines coming out of Tuesday's results. Among were, the turnout, driven by votes thru the mail being the highest for the August Primaries since 2002. Also, Democrats dominating Republicans in votes by mail and both Democrats appointed to their posts by Governor Ron DeSantis who ran for election won their races.
Those three observations stand alone. But, they’re also interconnected into the bigger picture as we head to November’s election and beyond. Also, now that virtually all votes have been accounted for by the state. We now know that more Floridians voted by mail than in person.
In a Florida first for any election type, most of the votes were literally mailed in. All in all, approximately 3.9 million votes were cast for Tuesday’s elections statewide. Of those, just over 2.2 million of all votes were mailed into election’s supervisors. No doubt the vote by mail surge was driven by the pandemic but Floridians also tend to be creatures of habit. This is especially true with politics. Recently, I illustrated that while about ten percent of Americans vote split ballots in general elections only between 3%-6% of Floridians will vote for candidates of both parties.
It remains to be seen whether most votes cast in November will take place by mail. Where we are with the pandemic will likely factor in heavily to that decision for many but it’s likely that many first-time mail voters will stick with it. As of now, this is good news for Democrats. Democrats outpaced Republicans with votes by mail 50% to 35%. That’s a huge advantage without additional context but it’s even more impressive when the context is added. Republicans had previously outvoted Democrats by mail in every August Primary election cycle since the state kept track of the partisan split of mailed-in votes. So, we’re talking about Democrats taking away a traditional Republican advantage and doing so by 15 points! That should be cause for concern for Republicans looking towards November. On back of this success, Democrats will doubtlessly target activating even more of their voters this way for November.
All of this can’t be taken in a vacuum. It’s likely many Democrats who would have voted in person opted to vote by mail due to the pandemic. However, the increase in turnout, which again was the highest in 18 years, was driven by increased participation by Democrats and specifically through the mail. To summarize, if more Floridians will now vote by mail than in person and if Democrats maintain a 15% advantage voting by mail, you get the idea. Republicans have lots of work to do in Florida in advance of November.
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