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Florida GOP buoyed by early voting outperformance
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Florida GOP buoyed by early voting outperformance

Florida’s Republican Party is feeling upbeat ahead of Election Day, with a memo highlighting a broad set of voting data that suggests good news for the party statewide.

The Florida GOP continues to be emboldened by advance vote which overwhelmingly favored Republican voters. A memo to GOP agencies and staff points to an R+20 advantage in total early voting, with more than 1 million more Republicans voting in person than Democrats.

Democrats maintained an advantage in mail-in voting, with about 193,000 more ballots than GOP voters. But overall, the GOP maintains a 10 percentage point lead in Monday’s vote, about 845,000 more votes than Democrats.

The party is also celebrating what they describe as a poor showing for Democrats during Sunday’s “Souls to the Vote” drive, noting that Democrats polled just under 29,000 votes.

To put the numbers in perspective, the party compared its turnout total so far with the same point in 2020, when former President Donald Trump won the Sunshine State by about 3 percentage points.

Voter turnout this year is up 7 percentage points each in early voting, in-person and mail-in voting, with an overall change in turnout from four years ago of 11 percentage points.

Overall, Democrats are up one percentage point in 2020, with a D+14 in mail-in voting overturning Republicans’ R+13 advantage in early, in-person voting.

Republicans have kept pace with overall early voting compared to the 2020 election, even winning easily with more than 3.5 million ballots cast so far from Republican voters, compared to just 3.4 million four years ago.

Meanwhile, they claim Democratic turnout has “collapsed.” By Monday, nearly 2.7 million Democrats had voted, while in 2020, at this point in the election, more than 3.5 million had voted.

The drop may be linked to mail-in ballot requests, with 1.2 million fewer Democrats requesting mail-in ballots this year than in 2020. It is worth noting that the waiver is probably related to an electoral law extended by the Government. Ron DeSantis signed in 2021, which canceled all permanent mail-in ballot applications after the 2022 election. That means many voters would have assumed they would receive a mail-in ballot, not knowing they had to request one again.

But with fewer mail-in ballots requested and returned, Democrats had to commit to early, in-person voting. Only about 112,000 Democrats voted in person earlier than in 2020.

The GOP is keeping a particularly close eye on Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Pinellas and Seminole counties, where President Joe Biden won in 2020.

They will also go after Palm Beach and Osceola counties, where Democrats lead in voter registration, but only narrowly.

The story may not get any better for Democrats on Election Day, with GOP data analysis finding that there are still nearly 800,000 Republican voters classified as likely or very likely to vote who have yet to vote.

Democrats, meanwhile, have fewer than 600,000 voters who are likely or very likely to vote.


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