Morning Florida Voters Lean Heavily Toward Republicans, Though Dems Outpace in Early Turnout: Cook Report’s Dave Wasserman
Election Day is well underway around the country, and Dave Wasserman of the Cook Report has his eyes on some early trends in Florida.
The editor for the nonpartisan analysis newsletter published a series of Twitter threads explaining that the Republican vote in the Sunshine State is already outpacing those who voted early or by mail in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. He added the caveat that the GOP election day turnout increase isn’t “unexpected,” however, since it reflects how “we’re going to see unprecedented partisan polarization between the early/mail batches and the Election Day batches tonight.”
It's not like this is unexpected, and it's an important reminder that we're going to see unprecedented partisan polarization between the early/mail batches and the Election Day batches tonight.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2020
Wasserman went on to explain that the data extends far beyond a singular county, and most registered voters have already turned in their ballots.
Also keep in mind: the Election Day share of the overall FL electorate is going to be historically low this year b/c 62% of registered voters already cast ballots before EDay polls opened.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2020
Wasserman remained on top of this analysis as he responded later on to New York Times’ Nate Cohn:
Yeah, we'll see how it looks this afternoon. Already, this hour has been marginally better for Ds than 7-8am. https://t.co/1XsuY7WQdw
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2020
Even though Wasserman assessed that Democrats had an uptick in the 9 a.m. hour, he noted that Democrats only make up a third of Florida’s registered voters who haven’t voted yet, and Republicans are still outpacing them. He offered Palm Beach County as an example for this trend.
For example, in Palm Beach Co., the breakdown of outstanding voters heading into Election Day was 36% D, 28% R, 36% NPA/Other.
Of the 25,943 Palm Beach voters who had cast ballots by 8:10am today, they broke down 46% R, 27% D, 27% NPA/Other.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2020
Later, Wasserman announced that Florida finished sorting through the early votes. While there is still a large amount of registered voters yet to be accounted for, his breakdown was that Democrats have already seen a 66.9 percent turnout, Republicans have 66.4 percent, and Independents are at 52.6 percent.
New: FL finished Monday w/ 9,069,761 early/mail votes cast (63% of RVs). Party breakdown:
Dem: 3,548,112 (66.9% turnout)
GOP: 3,432,696 (66.4%)
NPA/Other: 2,088,953 (52.6%)— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2020
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