Central Florida's Early Ballots Near One Million: 981,069 Cast Through Saturday, With Osceola Running 34 Percent Ahead of 2022
The seven-county region is voting 18 percent ahead of the 2022 midterm's pace heading into today's final early-voting day. Orange County has cast 295,797 ballots, and the region's turnout already sits at 37.2 percent.
Central Florida goes into the final day of early voting within sight of a million ballots. The Central Florida Early Vote tracker, compiled from the Florida Division of Elections' daily early-voting and vote-by-mail reports and the county feeds, counts 981,069 ballots cast across the seven-county region through Saturday, October 31 — 18% more than the region had cast at the same point in the 2022 midterm, and 32% below the presidential-year pace of 2024, with regional turnout already at 37.2%.
The county table is where the story lives. Orange County leads the region with 295,797 ballots, up 24% against 2022 at 36.1% turnout. Osceola County is the region's pace-setter: 82,705 ballots, up 34% against 2022 — the largest county jump in the tracker — at 34.7% turnout. Seminole County has cast 120,232 ballots, up 15% at 35.0% turnout. One caution the tracker itself flags: a 2021 state law reset every mail-ballot request after each general election, so mail counts run low against 2022 by design; total ballots, early and mail together, are the honest pace measure, and that is the measure used here.
What remains is today. Early voting closes at 8 p.m. tonight in Orange, Osceola and Seminole Counties — any site in a voter's own county, 27 of them in Orange County — and after that the only door left is Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, when every voter uses their assigned polling place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and a completed mail ballot must be in the county Supervisor of Elections' office by 7 p.m. A region already at 37.2% turnout before the final early day and Election Day is a region taking this midterm seriously.
