In the first five days of early voting in Los Angeles County, turnout figures reveal that 3.5 times as many voters logged their votes in California’s primary election as in 2012.
Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are vying for their respective party’s endorsements. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) lost the Indiana primary and subsequently left the race.
Early voting in California begins 29 days prior to the day of the election, on May 9. June 7 is primary day in California for 2016. The L.A. Registrar of voters reported 252 early votes for this primary as of Friday, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. For the same period of time in the 2012 presidential election year, only 72 ballots were cast.
The L.A. Registrar reports a 21.87 percent turnout of primary election voters among those registered in presidential year 2012. In 2008, the year that then Sen. Barack Obama won his party’s nomination over Hillary Clinton in the primary, L.A. County turnout was 55.26 percent. In 2004, turnout was 37.59 percent.
In an April, Breitbart News’ analysis of Republican primary election votes through the New York primary established that 2016 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump had topped 2012 eventual nominee Mitt Romney’s popular vote totals by over two million votes. Even second-place Cruz came a mere near 290,000 short of Romney’s total. Breitbart News analysis of GOP primary election turnout for that period also revealed a jump of 8.7 million votes in 2016 over 2012.
Of the estimated 10.1 million people that live in Los Angeles, approximately 6.1 million are eligible to vote. 4.8 million people in L.A. county were actually registered to vote as of May 2016.
Mail-in ballots — expected to constitute some two-thirds of the total — were sent on May 10, and can be turned in at any time up through Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by June 7 and received by June 10.
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