Florida Republicans are outpacing Democrats so far in record breaking voter turnout. That’s a change from prior early voting and mail-in-ballot trends, but it’s not a surprise to political watchers.
Florida reported over 370,000 voters on the first day of early voting, a record in the state. Republicans dominated Democrats 2-to-1 in turnout on that first day. That was enough to allow Republicans to pass the slim lead Democrats had through vote-by-mail ballot returns.
Chair of the Republican Party of Florida Evan Power said the turnout is due to sustained effort from his party to get its members voting earlier.
“I think the goal for us is to try to turn out every Republican voter possible. And the way to do that is to get people to vote in the way they feel comfortable, whether that's by mail earlier on election day, but we want to take the pressure off of Election Day and try to get as many votes banked as possible so that we can make this a big victory and make it too big to rig,” he said.
Traditionally, Democrats have exceeded Republicans in voting early, said University of South Florida Professor Emerita Susan MacManus. But the GOP’s voter registration lead and a concerted effort from the party to shift attitudes about early voting amongst their voters means MacManus isn’t surprised by the change.
“First of all, the parties are stressing it. Secondly, a lot of people are saying, ‘well, if we have another hurricane, who knows? I just want to be done with it. Make sure my votes in.’ And third is, a lot of them, like everybody else, just say, ‘I've had enough of this. I don't want to look at another text message or TV ad or whatever else, I just I'm voting, and I'm done with it, end of story,’” she said.
Political parties track who casts their vote early, meaning those who cast early ballots are less likely to be targeted with spam text, email and digital political advertisements.
Voting early is spiking across the country as well. Early voting records were also set Monday in North Carolina and Georgia.