Since I vote my mail in Florida, I’ve started tracking the voting-by-mail numbers supplied by the Florida Division of Elections. In just the past four days I’ve noticed a dramatic upswing in activity for Democrats voting by mail, which is in line with other stories I’ve seen of the Democrats far surpassing Republicans in new voter registration and Clinton’s far superior ground game in the state. This is the only real, actual voting activity we have in the state right now, so I think it’s worth a look.
When I checked the voting-by-mail data on October 12, for a diary I wrote that day, I happened to put all the data into a spreadsheet. So I was able to compare the Oct. 12 data with the latest data up on the Division of Elections website (for Oct. 16) and here’s what I found:
- In just the last four days (Oct. 12-Oct. 16), Democrats’ Voting-by Mail-activity has increased 6%, compared to 3% for Republicans (by “Voting-by-Mail activity” I mean the number of people who have both requested mail-in ballots and not yet returned them and those who have returned them).
- Democrats have also surpassed Republicans in terms of the increase in returned mail-in ballots (i.e. actual votes) in the past four days. The number of Democrats who voted by mail increased 951% in the past four days, compared to 845% for Republicans.
- Republicans still hold a slight lead over Democrats in terms of percentage of people who have voted by mail to date: 42%-41%. However, four days ago that lead was much bigger-44%-38%-so Democrats have closed the gap by a whopping 5 percentage points in just the past four days. (I’ll also note that two years ago Republicans had a definite edge in the final mail-in voting numbers: 44%-38%).
If this momentum keeps up, we can definitely put Florida in the Win column for Hillary (and for Patrick Murphy in the Senate). Florida’s voter registration deadline has been extended to Tuesday, October 18 at 5:00 pm. Click here to learn how to vote — it’s easy!