States » Florida » Primary 2008
Updated 01/28, 13:02 PST
Florida is rare in providing comprehensive daily reports from their early in-person balloting for this season's presidential primary. EVIC has generated graphs of the ballot returns. Given Florida's supposed "unimportance" for the Democrats, it is interesting to note that Republicans and Democrats are voting at roughly the same rate; otherwise, we see the expected steady return of votes, with a small bump from the South Carolina and Nevada primaries. We'll be keeping these data updated daily.
See below for Paul Gronke's commentary, reprinted from the electionline.org newsletter.
Note: the dip on Sunday 20th is due to the small number of eary voting sites open available on Sunday.
Gronke's Commentary
While many pundits look ahead to next Tuesday's primary in Florida, polls opening will actually mark the end of an extended election that began on January 14 and ends Saturday.
The state instituted in-person early voting in 2004 in response to the controversies surrounding the 2000 election. In-person early voting starts 15 days before the election and ends two days before election day. Citizens can cast their ballots at county offices and public libraries. Florida introduced no-excuse absentee balloting at the same time.
Early voting could perhaps be considered a victim of its own success, at least in the last presidential election. In November 2004, many counties weren't ready for the crush. A number of counties reported problems with machines, while news reports from the time noted long lines in Jacksonville, Miami, Broward and elsewhere around the state.
No such problems have been reported in 2008 in the much lower-turnout primary. Still, according to some county supervisors, more than half of the ballots will be cast before election day.
The first 10 days of in-person early voting reveals some noteworthy trends. During the first week of balloting, the highest number of voters cast an in-person ballot on Tuesday (January 15th), although only slightly higher than on the first day. Turnout trended downward all week, rising slightly on Friday (January 18th) and then plummeted over the weekend. Only 13 of 67 counties allowed early voting on Sunday, and often with reduced hours.
Turnout rose slightly on Monday, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, to a level comparable to the previous Saturday. The real jump in turnout occurred on January 22, when nearly 60,000 ballots were cast, as many on that day as on the previous three days. Overall as of press time, 286,852 early votes have been cast by partisan registrants (as well as 38,788 unaffiliated and third party voters), and the state reports nearly the same number of absentee ballots.
In-person voting doesn't appear to be benefitting one political party over the other. Both Democrats and Republicans are voting early at the same rate. As of January 22, 146,139 Democrats, 3.5 percent of total party registrants, and 140,713 Republicans, 3.7 percent of registrants, have voted early in-person.