On the eve of the special election in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, the GOP holds a returned-ballot advantage of 4.32 percent in mailed-in ballots over the Democrats with approximately 120,000 votes already cast. The Democrats have built a small lead in in-person early-voting.
Republicans account for 49,868 returned ballots, while Democrats have turned in 44,812 ballots. The remaining ballots are from independent and third-party registered voters. By percentage, the GOP accounts for 42.63 percent of the returned ballots; Democrats account for 38.31 percent and other voters account for 19.06 percent.
At this point, the GOP has increased its returned-ballot advantage by more than two-and-a-quarter points from ten days ago. And it would appear, based on Monday’s returns, the gap could increase tomorrow. Of the approximately 3,200 ballots that were returned on Friday, 53 percent of them came from Republican voters, with just 29 percent coming from Democrats.
In other words, the GOP surge got surgier over the weekend.
In three previous elections in 2012 and 2013, the day before Election Day and Election Day itself see the most early ballots returned. It’s not certain this will be the case in the CD 13 special election, but if it is, the GOP could extend its returned-ballot lead even further.
The district is considered a tossup between the two major political parties, and ads for Democrat Alex Sink and Republican David Jolly have inundated mailboxes and airwaves in recent weeks.
Both Democrats and Republicans are road-testing strategies in this race, in hopes of figuring out what will work in campaigns across the country during November’s midterm elections.
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Material from Tamara Lush of the Associated Press was used in this post.
