Florida's Final Count Before Election Day: 5,402,229 Ballots In, Republicans Ahead — and 515,059 Mail Ballots Still Out
Republicans lead the pre-Election Day vote by about 135,000 ballots on the strength of early in-person voting, Democrats lead the mail — and half a million requested mail ballots had not come back by Monday morning.
More than 5.4 million Floridians had already voted before a single Election Day precinct opens. As of 8 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 2, the Florida Division of Elections counted 5,402,229 ballots cast — almost 40 percent of the state's 13,672,122 registered voters — through early in-person voting and vote by mail combined.
Registered Republicans hold the overall lead in ballots cast, with 2,174,589, against 2,039,578 by registered Democrats, 1,049,454 by voters with no party affiliation and 138,608 by other registrants. The two parties built that total in opposite ways: Republicans dominated early in-person voting, 1,495,880 ballots to the Democrats' 1,206,968 out of 3,460,854 cast in person, while Democrats led the mail vote, returning 832,610 of the 1,941,375 mail ballots against 678,709 from Republicans. Party registration shows who cast a ballot, not how anyone marked it.
The number election officials are watching now is 515,059 — the mail ballots that had been requested but not yet returned as of Monday morning, including 202,539 requested by Democrats and 172,402 by Republicans. A mail ballot counts only if it reaches the county supervisor of elections office by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, and officials' guidance at this hour is blunt: do not mail it. A ballot put in the mail on Monday is not guaranteed to arrive in time, and Florida does not count ballots that arrive late — hand-deliver it to the elections office or an official drop-off instead.
Everyone else votes the old way on Tuesday: at their assigned precinct, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. local time, with a current photo ID that carries a signature. Voters who arrive without acceptable identification can still cast a provisional ballot, which is reviewed for eligibility by the canvassing board. At stake statewide are the governor's race, a U.S. Senate race, Amendment 3 and every local office on Florida's Nov. 3 ballot.
