people vote at a polling station in miami-dade county for the general election, monday, oct. 24, 2016. | ap photo/lynne sladky by marc caputo 10/25/16 09:00 am edt miami <u+2014> fueled by a strong first day of in-person early voting, more than 1.6 million floridians have cast pre-election day ballots as democrats threaten to overtake republicans in the number of votes banked before nov. 8. of the 1.6 million votes recorded tuesday morning, about 665,000 were made by florida republicans (almost 42 percent) and 658,000 by democrats (almost 41 percent). that means republicans are only holding on to a margin of 0.43 percentage points in pre-election day ballots cast over democrats. story continued below the gop lead over democrats was 1.7 points on monday morning, before the first in-person early voting polls opened. and at that point, on monday, republicans were well behind the 5 point advantage they held in pre-election day ballots cast during the same period of the election in 2012. if the trend continues tuesday -- the second day of in-person early voting <u+2014> democrats will overtake republicans in pre-election day ballots cast. as they did in 2012 when president obama narrowly won the state after a robust early vote campaign, republicans have suggested that democrats are "cannibalizing" their regular election day voters by getting them to vote early. therefore, some republicans say, democrats are simply exhausting their poll of reliable voters. however, the voting trends so far show that traditional democratic and republican election day and early voters are casting ballots in similar proportions. steve schale, a florida democratic consultant, said the cannibalization issue doesn't really matter anyway when it comes to hillary clinton's chances in florida, where polls show she's beating donald trump in the must-win state. even if democrats just cannibalized their vote, schale wrote on his blog , "clinton would almost surely win florida. republicans need to expand the electorate to win." "but, that isn't what is happening. over 28% of democratic vote by mail returnees as of yesterday were either first time voters, or rare voters (voted in 1 of last 3), compared to 20% for republicans," schale wrote. "other way of looking at it: 80% of gop vote by mail returns are from the most likely voters, compared to 72% of democrats. that is voter expansion." schale also pointed out that democrats are turning out more voters in what's known as the i-4 corridor, the crucial swing area of the swing state. historically, florida republicans do better than democrats in casting absentee vote-by-mail ballots and democrats cast more in-person early vote ballots than republicans. however, in recent years, democrats have made a push to get more of their voters to vote by mail and, as a result, republicans are losing what used to be a major organizational advantage for them heading into election day. this saturday and sunday mark the first full weekend of in-person early voting and democrats say they're prepared to show in force. floridians could cast at least 3 million more votes before nov. 8 if the state has a roughly 71 percent turnout and if half the ballots, as in 2012, are cast in-person early and by mail. none of the early and absentee ballots is tallied before election day, so it's unclear who is definitely ahead. the parties and campaigns, though, use the raw totals in ballots cast to measure the strength of their get-out-the-vote operation. one major unknown: independent voters, who have cast more than 18 percent of the ballots. still, republican insiders in florida are watching the trend lines and they don't like what they see. that story is here: http://politi.co/2eqlifr marc caputo's must-read briefing on what's hot, crazy or shady about politics in the sunshine state.
florida democrats poised to overtake republicans in early votes
marc caputo