In-person voting begins in South Florida. Here's what turnout looks like so far

MIAMI — Nearly 1.2 million Floridians have already voted by mail ahead of Election Day, including more than 300,000 in the Miami metro area alone, according to state and county elections data released as early in-person voting kicked off in most of Florida on Monday morning.

In Miami-Dade County, as of 2 p.m., more than 144,000 voters have already cast their ballots, including almost 124,000 who voted by mail and about 20,000 who went to the polls on Monday, according to the county elections department. Roberto Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the elections department, said that historically, around 500,000 Miami-Dade residents vote early in-person in presidential elections.

In Broward, more than 108,000 residents have already voted, while over 130,000 have cast their ballots in Palm Beach County, according to elections officials.

Early voting centers in South Florida will be open seven days a week, closing at 7 p.m. on Nov. 3. Election Day is Nov. 5.

The numbers are the latest sign that election season is well underway in Florida — a longtime battleground state that has largely been written off by both parties in this year’s presidential race as a likely Republican win. Yet Republicans and Democrats are still closely watching how voters will break on two proposed constitutional amendments that, if approved next month, would broadly expand abortion access in Florida and legalize recreational marijuana use for adults.

For now, Democrats have the advantage. Statewide, about half a million registered Democratic voters have returned their mail ballots to their local elections officials compared to about 427,000 registered Republicans. And there are still about 878,000 Democratic voters who still have yet to send in their mail ballots.

When it’s all said and done, however, Republicans are almost certain to come out on top in total votes cast. There are over a million more active registered GOP voters in the state than Democrats, and even when accounting for inactive voters – those who remain eligible to vote but don’t appear in the state’s total count — Republicans still outnumber Democrats by hundreds of thousands of voters.

Politically, Republicans also have an advantage in Florida. Most public polls show former President Doanld Trump leading his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, by anywhere from 4 to 14 percentage points, and the Florida GOP is far-better funded than the state Democratic Party, giving Republicans more resources to turn out voters in the coming weeks.

Still, Democrats are hoping to keep the GOP’s voter turnout advantage to a minimum. Harris’ campaign and state and national Democrats are dispatching high-profile surrogates across Florida this week to encourage voters to cast their ballots early.

DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried launched a bus tour in Orlando on Monday to mark the first day of early in-person voting. Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is set to headline a get-out-the-vote breakfast in Miami on Tuesday morning alongside Fried.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is set to attend a Harris campaign reception in Miami-Dade on Wednesday before appearing at a get-out-the-vote rally in Broward later in the day.

Trump has long criticized early and mail voting for years, claiming that the practice is vulnerable to fraud. Still, he has increasingly encouraged early and mail voting this year as Democrats have embraced the practice to turn out more voters. He’s set to speak at a roundtable with Hispanic leaders in Doral on Tuesday.

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