On the final day of voting in the brutal 2016 presidential race, voters in the Tampa Bay area have cast about a million ballots — and will likely cast thousands more before 7 p.m.
In Pinellas, according to that county's supervisor of elections website, there have been 442,628 ballots cast, and Republicans so far have a 9,000-point lead over Democrats.
Across the bay in Hillsborough County, Republican voters exceed Democrats by nearly 4,000.
Of course, both counties have tens of thousands of unpredictable independent voters.
Statewide, if Slate's estimation is to be believed, Clinton might be leading Trump by four points in the state.
Leading up to election day, there had been concerns about tampering with votes. Supporters of Republican nominee Donald Trump were encouraged to "watch" polling places so supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton do not attempt to commit voter fraud.
While conservative activist James O'Keefe attempted to cry foul over a bus taking black voters to the polls in Pennsylvania and there have been reports of harassment as close as Coral Gables, there haven't been major incidences of harassment thus far in the Tampa Bay area.
But at a Gulfport area polling place Tuesday morning, a handful of voters got aggressive when insisting to see that their votes were properly counted, which isn't possible at many polling sites.
At the Lake Vista Recreation Center in South St. Pete, one voter complained that a reporter and a pair of activists were standing too close to the sidewalk leading up to the entrance.
But thus far, there have been no major snafus noted.
“I don't think they're going to come into the black community with all that militia nonsense,” said State Rep. Ed Narain, D-Tampa, who was hitting polling places like East Tampa's C. Blythe Andrews Public Library to advocate for Clinton as well as Democrats down-ballot.
“Unfortunately there are a lot of people who've used the rhetoric that Donald Trump has spewed to basically say how they really feel about the progress that country has made, and unfortunately they're going back to some tactics from 60 years ago, using violence or at least the threat of violence to keep people from the polls. But you're not seeing that anywhere in Tampa, that I've heard about today.”
He said he's optimistic Clinton will win Florida, but doesn't see a landslide.
“I think it's going to be closer than we want it to be, but probably by about three percentage points, she wins Florida,” he said.
But throngs of third-party voters complicate the math.
Samuel Copeland had just cast his ballot at Lake Vista Recreation Center for Green Party nominee Jill Stein.
“I think that America needs a lot of change and I don't think the two candidates really have what it takes to change what needs to be changed,” he said.
Qudrain Nelson-Hines, 21, voted in his first presidential election Tuesday. He said Clinton has his vote.
“She has her head screwed on right," he said. "She knows what she wants, she knows what she has to do and she doesn't really say ignorant stuff like Donald Trump does.”
This article appears in Nov 3-10, 2016.