Florida's Final Early Tally: 5.4 Million Ballots In, and the Republican Registration Edge Is Half What It Was in 2022
The last count before Election Day shows Democrats casting 16 percent more early ballots than at this point in 2022, against 5 percent growth for Republicans.
Florida goes into Election Day with more than 5.4 million ballots already cast. The civicAPI compilation of state and county election-office counts, read this cycle, put ballots returned through Sunday, Nov. 1 at 5,401,055 — up 241,518 on the final day of early voting and 13 percent ahead of the same point in the 2022 midterm cycle.
The party-registration split is the story inside the total. Registered Democrats had cast 2,039,175 of those ballots, up 16 percent from the same point in 2022, while registered Republicans had cast 2,175,027, up 5 percent. That leaves a Republican registration edge of about 2.5 points among early voters, compared with 6.7 points at the same point in 2022. Registration shows who cast a ballot, not how anyone voted.
The state's own Division of Elections file, compiled Sunday morning from county reports through Saturday, counted 5,159,537 ballots — 3,256,797 cast early in person and 1,902,740 returned by mail — with 550,106 mail ballots still sent but not yet returned. Any of those mail ballots must reach the voter's county supervisor of elections by 7 p.m. on Tuesday to count. Everyone else votes at an assigned polling place on Election Day, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
