TALLAHASSEE — After falling behind in voting by mail, Florida Republicans quickly moved ahead of Democrats in ballots cast in the November election on the strength of turning out to early voting sites.
Data posted Tuesday morning on the state Division of Elections website showed that 202,036 Republicans had gone to early voting sites in the 50 counties where the option became available Monday, compared to 108,832 Democrats. Another 58,373 unaffiliated voters and 7,794 third-party voters also cast ballots at early voting locations.
The first-day early voting turnout put the GOP ahead of Democrats by just over 15,000 ballots cast in the Nov. 5 election. Democrats had a more than 77,000-voter lead in ballots cast by mail, a method that former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, has sometimes criticized as fraudulent.
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Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power pointed to early voting as a key to the party’s turnout strategy.
“I think you know there has been some concern about mail,” Power said Monday. “So, they (Republicans) want to vote in person, but they want to get their vote in early. I think President Trump has done a good job of communicating to people that he needs them to vote early so that we don’t have to rely just on Election Day voters. And, so, I think we’re headed in that direction.”
The new numbers reflected trends that have developed in Florida since 2016.
In 2016, when Trump defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Florida by 1.2 percentage points, Republicans cast 1,108,053 votes by mail compared to 1,049,809 by Democrats. In early voting, Democrats cast 1,580,003 ballots and Republicans cast 1,425,309.
Four years later, as Trump won Florida by more than 3 percentage points over eventual President Joe Biden, Democrats cast 2,189,710 votes by mail and 1,401,451 through the early voting process. Florida Republicans returned 1,506,223 vote-by-mail ballots and cast 1,959,875 early votes.
Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried, before casting an early vote Monday at the Leon County Courthouse, said her party has changed its focus since the 2022 elections, when just 49 percent of registered Florida Democrats voted compared to 64 percent of registered Republicans.
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“We recruited candidates in literally every seat from the (state) House and Senate to the congressionals. We have knocked on doors in all 67 counties. We’ve built an army and we have been message disciplined,” Fried said. “We’re holding the Republicans accountable. We’re talking about property insurance. We’re talking about abortion, the issues that are actually important to the people of the state. And so, you’re going to see a very different turnout than in 2022.”
As of Tuesday morning, Democrats had returned 555,450 mail-in-ballots while Republicans had returned 477,778, according to the Division of Elections website. Another 247,038 vote-by-mail ballots had come from unaffiliated voters, while 26,375 were from people registered with third parties.
While most counties started early voting Monday, it must be available statewide as of Saturday.
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