Florida's Early Vote Is Sagging Where Republicans Need It Most: The Panhandle Gap Behind the GOP's Uneasy Weekend
Republicans lead the early vote by just 2.8 points against an 11-point registration edge - and the softest turnout is in the Panhandle and rural North Florida counties Byron Donalds lost in his own primary, running 3.2 points below 2022.
Florida Republicans went into the fall expecting a comfortable campaign. The early-vote numbers have given them an uneasy final weekend instead, according to an Axios analysis reported Sunday - most intensely around Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, who still holds a narrow polling lead over Democrat David Jolly despite raising $176 million to Jolly's $28 million. As of Saturday afternoon, Republicans were ahead of Democrats by just 2.8 percentage points in early votes cast - a much thinner margin than in the last two general elections, and one achieved against an 11-point Republican registration advantage.
The geography is the part that should worry Tallahassee's neighboring counties most. The softest Republican performance is in the Panhandle and rural North Florida, including many of the 17 counties Donalds lost in the Republican primary: there, Republican turnout is running 3.2 points below 2022 levels, according to University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald, while in counties Donalds carried the drop is a smaller 1.1 points. Statewide, Democrats have already surpassed their entire 2022 early and mail vote total in 15 counties, while Republicans have done so in four - and among active registered voters under 30, a quarter of Democrats have already voted, compared with 9 percent of Republicans.
That arithmetic is why internal estimates shared with Axios put Donalds as many as 500,000 votes behind by Election Day - a projection, not a count - which would require him to win Tuesday's vote by roughly two to one to dig out. Republicans have structural reasons for calm: about two-thirds of Florida voters usually cast ballots before Election Day, the party outnumbers Democrats by some 1.5 million registered voters, and state GOP chair Evan Power told Axios the party's Election Day confidence is intact, saying it always wins Election Day and knows how to do this. The same reporting carries the wider stakes - concern inside the party about losing 10 to 15 state House seats and the supermajority with them. Whether Tuesday produces the usual Republican surge is now the whole question of Florida's election.
