Politics & Government
Republicans Surpass Dems In Combined Early Voting/vote-By-Mail
Registered Republicans moved ahead of registered Democrats on Thursday in the number of votes cast by mail and at early voting precincts.
October 27, 2022
Registered Republicans moved ahead of registered Democrats on Thursday in the number of votes cast by mail and at early voting precincts for the Nov. 8 election on Thursday.
Find out what's happening in Across Floridafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
More than 2.1 million voters have already voted in the Sunshine State. There have been 895,990 registered Republicans who have cast votes as of Friday morning, compared to 865,400 registered Democrats, and 411,541 votes from non-party-affiliated and third-party voters, according to the state’s division of election website.
The Democrats shot out to an early and robust lead when vote-by-mail ballots began being counted earlier this month, and currently 42.8% of all mail ballots have been cast by Democrats. Republicans are at 37.6% , and NPA’s/3rd party voters have cast 19.6 % of vote-by-mail ballots.
Find out what's happening in Across Floridafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
However, Republicans have returned a higher percentage of vote-by-mail ballots requested at 45%. Democrats have returned 39% of their ballots requested.
And after just four full days of early voting at the polls (which will go statewide on Saturday) GOP voters have more than an 118,000-vote lead – 262,654 to the Democrats 144,638.
Historically in Florida, Democrats have turned out more than GOP voters in casting early in-person votes, while Republicans have had larger numbers go to the polls on Election Day.
Conservative activists who felt that there were voting irregularities due to the high volume of mail-in balloting during the 2020 election are encouraging voters to hold off on voting until Election Day. According to a report from the Associated Press, the plan is based “on unfounded conspiracy theories that fraudsters will manipulate voting systems to rig results for Democrats once they have seen how many Republican votes have been returned early.”
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