Renzo Downey
With 857,058 ballots tabulated in Broward County, Joe Biden is matching Hillary Clinton‘s vote share in the Democratic stronghold from 2016.
The Democratic nominee leads President Donald Trump by 568,100 to 282,967 with all early votes and vote-by-mail ballots received by non recorded.
When polls closed, the county Supervisor of Elections Office showed 961,161 total ballots cast, enough for 76% voter turnout. Biden leads 66% to 33%, near equivalent to the 2016 margin between Trump and Clinton.
It’s still too close to call whether Trump will retake Florida four years after his upset victory.
In 2016, Broward County recorded 546,956 votes for Clinton and 258,521 for the President, a 67%-31% advantage.
Soon after polls opened Tuesday, Democrats had submitted three times the number of vote-by-mail ballots than Republicans, with 270,829 votes cast to Republicans’ 80,392.
Like elsewhere across the state, Republicans were more likely to vote in person. But Democrats still led in early in-person voting, 172,886 to 99,908.
The 364,711 early and 466,967 vote-by-mail ballots cast by Tuesday morning alone eclipsed the 811,940 ballots submitted in the county in 2016.
By 4:30 p.m., 102,796 ballots had been cast day-of, including 39,342 for Democrats, 31,409 for Republicans and 29,830 for unaffiliated voters. Turnout in the county was on its way toward 80%,
The county’s previous Supervisor of Elections, Brenda Snipes, had a 16-year tenure marred by controversy. A court ruled that Snipes’ office illegally destroyed paper ballots from the 2016 Democratic primary in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District. That prompted the Florida Division of Elections to send monitors to Broward for the 2018 election cycle.
That cycle didn’t work out much better. Broward’s ballot design was confusing for many voters and may have swung the U.S. Senate contest between Bill Nelson and Rick Scott. The county then faced delays in its recount because of machine issues.
Broward eventually missed the deadline to report its machine recount totals by two minutes.
Snipes eventually resigned her post, giving voters a chance for a fresh start. Her replacement, Pete Antonacci, chose not to run to retain his position. The controversy over the U.S. Senate race shows that while the Supervisor’s position is a down-ballot contest, it can have a significant impact on other, higher-profile races.
