Fla. Democrats are narrowing early-vote gap

Democrats are quickly narrowing the gap among Florida voters who already have cast ballots by mail or at early-voting locations.

As of 1:05 p.m. Wednesday, registered Republicans had cast about 4,900 more ballots than registered Democrats — 835,252 to 830,341, according to the state Division of Elections website. More than 2 million Floridians had voted.

The day before, Republicans were up by a little more than 16,000 ballots cast.

The difference lay largely in early-voting totals, where Democrats traditionally dominate.

I n early vote s al re ady c ast, Democrats lead the GOP 256,593 to 225,962. Of mail-ins submitted, where Republicans traditionally dominate, Democrats trail 573,748 to 609,290.

In blue-leaning Palm Beach County, nearly as many people voted at an early voting location on Tuesday as did on Monday, according to preliminary stats from the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections.

Tuesday was the second of 14 days of early voting in Palm Beach County for the Nov. 8 election.

The two-day total of 32,936 — 16,592 Monday and 16,344 Tuesday — already is more than a fourth of the 124,896 who participated in eight days of early voting for the November 2012 general election.

The state website’s early-voting figures for Palm Beach Count y, which, at 32,495, don’t exactly match those posted loc ally, are 9,023 GOP and 16,694 Dem-

One in a series about all races and referendums on Palm Beach County’s Nov. 8 ballots

Series runs daily through Sunday, the day before the start of early voting in the county

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The state’s mail-in figures for Palm Beach County show 36,244 Democrat and 20,735 Republican.

With so much attention on the presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and with Florida considered such a crucial state, scholars have forecast that as many people will vote before Nov. 8 as on Election Day, doing so either by mail-in ballots or via early voting, which runs through Nov. 6.

Voting hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The number of early voting days is at the discretion of each county’s supervisor of elections.

While Palm Beach County has scheduled the maximum allowable of 14, other counties have as few as eight.

To p p i n g P a l m B e a c h C ount y ’s 15 e a rly-vo t i ng sites Tuesday continued to be the Hagen Road branch county library west of Delray Beach, with 1,787, slightly fewer than the 1,923 who voted Monday.