About 1 million Floridians will have cast absentee ballots in the nation's biggest battleground state by day's end based on current trends.
As of this morning, 925,000 people have already voted. That's about 10 percent -- if note more -- of the likely Florida electorate of about 9 million voters.
Republicans are hanging on to their lead in absentee ballots cast. But they're not as far ahead as they used to be. Republicans are ahead by 5.4 percentage points (note: it looks like 6% in the numbers below due to rounding). But that's down compared to this point in 2008, when their cast ballots were 16 points higher than Democratic absentee ballots cast, according to Democrats.**
Still, it's a GOP lead. Expect that to change when in-person early voting, which Democrats dominate, begins Saturday Oct. 27.
Voted ballots:
| Party | Voted | % |
| REP | 414,016 | 45% |
| DEM | 363,881 | 39% |
| IND | 147,707 | 16% |
| Total | 925,604 |
Outstanding requests:
| Party | Requested | % |
| REP | 634,580 | 39% |
| DEM | 648,824 | 40% |
| IND | 326,680 | 20% |
| Total | 1,610,084 |
Top 15 AB-voting hotspots, which account for 68 percent of the ballots cast (R/D=Republican-Democrat):
| County | Total | REP | DEM | R/D |
| PIN | 101,737 | 42,094 | 40,181 | 1,913 |
| DAD | 73,472 | 32,963 | 27,846 | 5,117 |
| HIL | 63,559 | 25,200 | 27,262 | (2,062) |
| ORA | 51,309 | 20,061 | 22,867 | (2,806) |
| BRO | 46,816 | 13,759 | 25,699 | (11,940) |
| SAR | 40,881 | 18,404 | 15,906 | 2,498 |
| LEE | 33,689 | 17,431 | 9,985 | 7,446 |
| BRE | 33,162 | 16,291 | 11,960 | 4,331 |
| POL | 31,919 | 13,641 | 13,684 | (43) |
| PAS | 29,073 | 12,356 | 11,440 | 916 |
| VOL | 28,830 | 12,996 | 10,852 | 2,144 |
| DUV | 26,280 | 13,250 | 9,658 | 3,592 |
| CLL | 26,226 | 15,969 | 5,716 | 10,253 |
| MRN | 22,181 | 10,644 | 8,570 | 2,074 |
| SEM | 21,302 | 11,068 | 6,812 | 4,256 |
**One of the reasons Democrats are doing better with absentee ballots is that they have to because the GOP-controlled Legislature cut back on in-person early voting hours relative to 2008, when Democrats swamped the polls during a cumulative 120 hours of early voting over 14 days. Now, the days are limited to eight and the hours to 96 (note: the hours were always capped at 96 total, but then Gov. Charlie Crist issued an executive order that kept the early voting polls open longer).
We last explored this in an article when the vote hit the half-million mark
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