In-person voting begins in South Florida. This is what the voter turnout looks like so far

Nearly 1.2 million Floridians have already voted by mail before Election Day, including more than 300,000 in the Miami metropolitan area alone. That’s according to state and county election data released as early in-person voting began in most of Florida on Monday morning.

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

According to election officials, more than 108,000 residents have already voted in Broward, while more than 130,000 have cast ballots in Palm Beach County.

Early voting centers in South Florida are open seven days a week and close on November 3rd at 7 p.m. Election day is November 5th.

The numbers are the latest sign that election season is in full swing in Florida – a longtime battleground state that was largely dismissed by both parties in this year’s presidential race as a likely Republican victory. Yet Republicans and Democrats are still watching closely as voters will take issue with two proposed constitutional amendments that, if passed next month, would broadly expand access to abortions in Florida and legalize recreational marijuana use for adults.

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At the moment the Democrats have the advantage. Statewide, about half a million registered Democratic voters have returned their mail-in ballots to their local election officials, compared to about 427,000 registered Republicans. And there are still about 878,000 Democratic voters who have not yet mailed their mail-in ballots.

Ultimately, however, Republicans will almost certainly 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 show up in the state’s total — Republicans still outnumber Democrats by hundreds of thousands voters.

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Republicans also have a political advantage in Florida. Most public polls show former President Donald Trump leading his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, by a margin of 4 to 14 percentage points, and the Florida GOP is far better funded than the state’s Democratic Party, giving Republicans more There are resources to win over voters in the coming weeks.

Still, Democrats hope to keep the GOP’s turnout advantage to a minimum. Harris’ campaign and state and national Democrats are sending 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 kicked off a bus tour in Orlando on Monday to mark the first day of early in-person voting. Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will headline an election breakfast in Miami with Fried on Tuesday morning.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will attend a Harris campaign reception in Miami-Dade on Wednesday before appearing at a campaign event in Broward later in the day.

Trump has criticized early voting and mail-in voting for years, claiming the practice is vulnerable to fraud. Still, he has increasingly promoted early voting and mail-in voting this year as Democrats adopted the practice to attract more voters. He will speak at a roundtable with Hispanic leaders in Doral on Tuesday.