Florida's Early Vote Is Final: 5,401,055 Ballots In, and Miami-Dade Cast More Than Any Other County

Florida's early vote closed Sunday with 5,401,055 ballots returned statewide through Nov. 1, according to the compiled count built on the Florida Division of Elections' vote-by-mail and early-voting file, which runs through Oct. 31. The final day alone added 241,518 ballots. Everything cast from here is cast on Election Day itself, Tuesday, Nov. 3, at assigned precincts.

Miami-Dade sits at the top of the county table. In the state file through Oct. 31 the county had cast 485,722 ballots — the largest total of any Florida county — with a Democratic-registered edge of 2.7 points among ballots cast, and a total already at 104 percent of Miami-Dade's entire 2022 early vote, with a day of the compiled count still to add. Broward and the rest of South Florida follow in the same file, and the region's weight in the statewide total is the reason both parties' Florida operations spent the final weekend here.

The comparison with the last midterm is the part both campaigns will quote. Registered Democrats statewide have cast 16 percent more ballots than at the same point in 2022, Republicans 5 percent more, and unaffiliated voters 25 percent more, while the party-registration gap among ballots cast is R+2.5 — narrower than the R+6.7 at the same point in 2022. Those figures describe who has voted, not how they voted, and they settle nothing about Tuesday's results. What they do settle is the size of the remaining electorate: with 5.4 million ballots already in, Election Day in Florida is now a contest over the voters who waited.