The Orlando and South Florida Sun-Sentinel papers this morning have overwhelming evidence that it's already a huge year for Republicans at the polls. So far they say that of the 1.1 million Floridians who have cast ballots so far, 52 percent are Republicans — and only 34 percent are Democrats.
From the article in those publications today:
Through the first eight days of early voting 491,764 voters have cast ballots. And although Republicans have never out-performed Democrats in early voting, the GOP has built a stunning lead of 50,700 voters through Monday, according to an Orlando Sentinel/Sun Sentinel analysis.
Republicans out-performed Democrats on seven of the first eight days, including last Saturday when Democrats held a massive "accountability" rally to try to fire up their base.
Republicans traditionally perform better in persuading absentee voters to mail in ballots. When those figures are included, the GOP lead swells to more than 200,000 votes cast with seven days to go until the election.
The article by Aaron Deslatte and John Maines reports that Rick Scott is doing to Alex Sink in absentee/early voting what he did to Bill McCollum – blitzkrieging them to get out the vote:
Heading into the stretch run leading to Nov. 2, Scott has spent more than $5 million on mail and phones — $3 million of it in the GOP primary — to reach out to the 1.5 million Floridians who received mail-in ballots this fall.
As we learned after the August 24 primary, virtually half of all voters either participated via absentee ballot or by going to the polls in the two weeks leading up to Election Day – which led McCollum to whine afterwards that he had actually "won" on august 24, but lost in the early voting.
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2010.