One week down, less than one to go.
With almost 168,000 ballots cast, Republicans hold a 2,550 lead over Democrats in local early voting,
The turnout is about what Supervisor of Elections Mike Hogan said was expected at the outset.
Hogan, overseeing his first presidential election, said expectations were for about 210,000 early votes to be cast, or about 15,000 a day.
“We’re coming pretty close to hitting that projection,” he said Monday evening.
The largest early voting day was Oct. 24, when just over 16,000 people cast ballots. It’s trickled downward since that first day, reaching a low of 10,225 on Sunday.
The party breakdown of those votes and a slim Republican lead isn’t surprising, said Mike Binder, director of the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab.
One aspect that does surprise him is not the overall number, but how it’s been comprised.
Early results show much stronger turnout in more affluent suburban areas. For instance, Pablo Creek Regional Library on Beach Boulevard leads the way with more than 10,200 early votes cast, followed by libraries in the Beaches, Deerwood and Mandarin areas that have 9,000-plus ballots in.
That pales in comparison to turnout in more urban core sites like the Legends Center, which has the fewest ballots cast at 2,381. The Gateway office (2,384), Bradham Brooks Library (3,233) and Oceanway Community Center (4,363) aren’t much higher.
People are able to vote at any early voting site, but have to go to their precinct on Election Day.
Binder said one possibility for the lower turnout in those areas is the absence of U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown from the ballot.
The longtime elected official has been mired in legal issues stemming from an indictment related to her involvement with an educational nonprofit. She was defeated by former state Sen. Al Lawson in the August primary.
Brown brought people in those heavily Democratic areas to the polls, said Binder. Her absence could mean “thousands of voters” could end up staying home and not voting, which would hurt local Democrat turnout.
However, he said, the turnout effort could be boosted by a visit Thursday by President Barack Obama to the University of North Florida campus.
Still, Binder said, he expects overall turnout to be fairly high.
“It’s an election that has captivated the American electorate like no other,” he said.
Hogan said the early turnout in the urban core early voting sites compared to the suburbs is typical, as population centers are greater around those sites with better turnout.
Overall, 167,921 people have voted early locally, according to elections figures Tuesday morning. Of that, 113,440 came through early voting sites, 54,362 have been cast via mail and 119 have been provisional ballots.
Across the state, nearly 30 percent of eligible voters — almost 1.8 million — have already cast their ballots for next week’s election, according to the News Service of Florida. Like in Duval County, Republicans hold a slim margin over Democrats.
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