GOP holds 9-to-1 edge over Democrats among newly registered Florida voters
Democratic Party Chairwoman Barbara Byrd-Bennett has said that the 2016 election will be different once voters start getting down their registration lists: “As long as Donald Trump is in office,” she told CNN last month, “there is no doubt in my mind that all of the Democrats who are not registered voters will stay out. But every four years, and this is not about 2016, but every four years, when Democrats finally do get on the ballot, guess who will be the majority voters?”
This year, the Democratic Party of Florida has an estimated 5 million more registered voters in the state than the party had in 2016. That’s because Democratic voters are registering to vote in early registration forms – a practice that has become more widespread as the party has begun focusing more on early voter registration and outreach.
Democrats lead Republicans on early registration in both counties of the Sunshine State.
Florida’s early voting period for the 2016 national election begins Feb. 23, just before the Feb. 27 primaries. More than 50 counties and 1,600 days earlier than 2016, all Democrats began registering early voters.
In the 2016 election, 2,856,600 Florida voters cast ballots early, and 7,731,400 cast them on Election Day. That’s an increase of about 1.9 percent the percentage of early voting and a net decrease of about 3.4 percent from 2016.
The number of early voters increased in Florida from 2012, when there were 2,742,000 early voters in 2012, to 2016, when there were 2,856,600 early voters in 2016.
In the 2016 election, there were 15 counties that added the earliest registration date of Jan. 22 to their early voting lists, while there were 13 counties that expanded the earliest registration date to Jan. 8 in 2016.
More than half of
