Halloween Turnout: 700K More Republicans Than Democrats Have Voted Ahead of Election Day

Five days out from Election Day, over 700,000 more Republicans than Democrats have cast ballots in a show of force signifying the conservatives' massive voter registration lead.

As of 8:30 a.m. Thursday, 2,787,359 Republicans statewide had voted compared to 2,060,088 Democrats. This number combines both the vote-by-mail category and early voting, which began Oct. 21 in most counties.

In other words, about 51% of registered Republicans and 47% of registered Democrats have voted. This reflects about 45% of the overall vote, considering over 6.2 million people of the 13.95 million registered voters have cast their ballots.

The lion's share of that lead comes from early voting, the period where traditionally more Republicans than Democrats vote; 1,904,974 Republicans voted early compared to 1,018,259 Democrats. This tally severely ate into—and eventually swallowed—the Democrats' 159,144 ballot lead during the vote-by-mail period, the method usually most Democrats use.

Despite this growing conservative lead, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told reporters Tuesday, "Now I know many of you are looking at the early vote returns and are quick to count us out, but to that, I say Florida is still in play."

She pointed out that over 1.2 million NPAs have already voted and hopes that 50% to 60% will vote for Harris. That number, however, may be a bit ambitious: according to a new poll, 52% of NPA Floridians back Trump compared to 42% who said they will vote for Harris in November.

Combined with the over one million more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state, this does not bode well for the Democratic party.

Florida polls are still waiting for just over a million requested vote-by-mail ballots to be returned, 415,804 of which belong to Democrats. The last early vote day is November 3, and Election Day is November 5.

Democrats currently lead in turnout in Alachua, Broward, Gadsden, Leon, Orange, Osceola, and Palm Beach Counties.