Florida Republicans reduced the Democrats’ advantage to roughly 6,000 ballots cast in the first two and a half hours of voting in the state, according to Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL).
Democrats went into Election Day with a 108,123 advantage in total ballots cast. That was due, primarily, to the increase in mailed-in votes, though the GOP consistently reduced their opposition’s overall lead via early voting. At the end of the early voting period, Republicans had outpaced Democrats in early, in-person voting by over 558,000 votes.
According to Waltz, Republicans narrowed the overall gap, which stood at over 108k on Monday, to an estimated 6,000 in the first two and a half hours of Election Day voting.
“Looking strong for the #GOP in #Florida so far!” he wrote in a Monday morning update. “2.5 hrs into voting and heavy GOP turnout has cut the Dem ballot lead from 112k to 6k!”
“Two caveats. Miami-Dade reporting is slower from manually reporting their totals and GOP-heavy panhandle is an hour behind,” he added:
Republicans have been banking on a strong turnout to secure the state for President Donald Trump, continually pointing to the fact that the Democrats now hold the slimmest lead in voter registrations in the state’s history.
Florida polls are open until 7 p.m., with 29 electoral votes available for the victor.
As of 2:30 p.m. the Republican vote total had surpassed that of the Democrats with 4,041,888 to 3,884,798 respectively, a GOP lead of 157,090.