Republicans still lead in FL absentee ballots

October 14th, 2008 | Category: Florida Politics Blog

The presidential ground game in Florida is shifting more to early voting sites, which open Oct. 20. But we should keep our eye on absentee ballots. To period, Democrats have requested 573,388, independents 254,789, and Republicans 792,942. Put another way, of the more than 1.6-million absentee ballots requested, nearly half have gone to Republicans, about 35 percent to Democrats, and nearly 16 percent to independents.

A poor sign for Democrats? Not entirely. At that point in 2006, Democrats say, more than 56 percent of absentee ballots had gone to Republicans, 28 percent to Democrats, and 15 percent to independents. So what two years ago was a 28 percent GOP advantage on absentee ballots has been cut in half that year.