People vote at a polling station on Oct. 24, the first day of early voting in Miami-Dade County for the general election in Miami. | AP Photo Democrats widen lead over GOP in Florida early votes But ‘X-factor’ obscures whether Clinton has a firm lead over Trump.

Florida Democrats increased their lead over Republicans in casting pre-Election Day ballots to nearly 33,000 as of Sunday morning, but the sheer number of new voters and independents makes it tougher than ever for experts to say whether Hillary Clinton has a clear advantage over Donald Trump in the nation’s biggest battleground state.

Of the record 6.1 million in-person early votes and absentee ballots cast, Democrats have an advantage over Republicans of only 0.5 percentage points, with each party casting roughly 39 percent of the ballots. Though it’s a lead for Democrats, they’re not going to match their 3.7-percentage-point lead in early votes by Election Day they enjoyed in 2012. And Republicans tend to outvote Democrats on Election Day in Florida.


The early and absentee ballots won’t be tallied until Election Day, but party registration is still a strong predictor of whom voters will choose. And that’s where independents — whose support for Trump or Clinton varies by the survey — make this election so confounding. They’ve cast 1.3 million ballots, or 21 percent of the ballots so far, and they’re therefore shaping up to be the fulcrum on which the race for the White House tilts, because Trump is almost assured a loss without Florida’s 29 Electoral College votes.

On top of that, about 25 percent of the early voting electorate so far did not vote in 2012.

“Together, these are just a big X-factor,” said Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political science professor who provides the best nonpartisan research on the state’s voter rolls.

“We don’t know the vote choice of the independents, and I’d be very wary of predictive models showing whether they support Trump or Clinton,” said Smith, who posts numbers daily on his ElectionSmith website. “Then you have a quarter of the electorate so far with no vote history in 2012. So we know little or almost nothing about them.”

And though most recent polls give Clinton the slightest of leads over Trump in Florida, her advantage is still within the margin of error.

Clinton’s campaign has taken heart with the performance of Hispanic voters — who lean strongly toward Clinton in most major polls. They’re far outpacing their share of the early and absentee ballots cast in Florida, but it’s technically still too early to say whether they’ll cast a historic number of ballots.

Hispanics had cast 14.8 percent of the vote, but they comprise about 16 percent of the rolls as of Sunday morning, according to Smith.

However, Smith noted, half of the Hispanic vote typically is cast on Election Day. If that trend holds, then Latinos are poised to potentially deliver the White House to Clinton — assuming the polls are right. Also, Smith’s analysis found that almost 36 percent of Florida Hispanics hadn’t voted in 2012 — 10 percentage points more than the overall population. About 25 percent of Hispanics who have voted so far voted on Election Day in 2012, according to Smith.

About 41 percent of the Hispanics who have so far voted are registered as Democrats, and 29 percent as Republicans, Smith’s data showed. Twenty-eight percent are independents.

To keep the Democratic turnout numbers trending upward, President Barack Obama planned a rally in Hispanic-heavy Kissimmee in Central Florida on Sunday, the final day of in-person early voting. Kissimmee is in one the biggest counties in Florida. Republicans and Democrats attribute some of the late surge in Democratic ballots to Obama’s recent trips to the state.

“As of last Tuesday, I thought Trump would win Florida. Then Obama showed up,” said one Florida Republican consultant who supports Trump but didn’t want to go on record doubting the Republican’s chances. “A lot changed when that blue plane landed in Florida.”

Obama’s visit also coincides with a number of statewide “Souls to the Polls” events to ensure African-Americans, who back Clinton by the widest margins, early vote after church. As of Sunday morning, the share of black voters who already cast ballots had increased to 12.8 percent, Smith’s data show. But black voters account for 13.4 percent of the active registered voters.

Michael Halle, who works on analytics for Clinton’s campaign, tweeted on Sunday afternoon that the Democratic nominee’s team likes the trends it sees among black voters.

“More African American voters have already voted early in Florida than 2012 — doesn't count today and Sunday traditionally very strong,” he wrote.

However, whites — who strongly favor Trump — are still overperforming their registration numbers when it comes to early voting. Whites have cast 67 percent of the ballots and make up 64 percent of the rolls. The share of the white vote, though, has decreased from about 69 percent from early last week.

Throughout, the proportion of no-party-affiliation independent voters has continued to grow. Of them, about 60 percent are white, 22 percent Hispanic and 7 percent black — voting percentages that roughly track the demographic make-up of registered independents overall.

Trump’s campaign notes that GOP voters are casting pre-Election Day ballots at a higher rate than ever, especially compared with the election four years ago, when Obama narrowly beat Republican Mitt Romney. Then, though Democrats had a 3.7-point lead in pre-Election Day ballots, Republicans outvoted Democrats by 1.1 points on Election Day.

“Republicans now make up 1.4% more of the early vote share than at this point in 2012. Democrats make up 5% less of the early vote share,” the campaign said in a statement.

“Although Republicans are now trailing in total ballots cast [by about 33,000] Republicans were trailing by over 100,000 ballots cast. This is a remarkable improvement, and erases the 74,309 votes Romney lost the state by in 2012.”

However, the rolls have rebalanced significantly in the Trump era. More conservative-voting Democrats and independents registered as Republicans in 2012 than liberal-leaning Republicans and independents who registered as Democrats. So about 50,000 of the lead that Democrats had in 2012 in casting early ballots likely came from those who voted for Romney. In addition, about 40,000 more Republican Election Day voters from 2012 have voted early than Democrats who have voted early.

That leaves a slightly higher percentage of higher-propensity Democrats available to vote this Election Day than in 2012.

All of the data lead political scientists like Smith back to where many believed this race would end up months ago: in a tough-to-predict close contest.

“You can think about this in two ways,” Smith said. “If Hillary Clinton has this vaunted ground game that can turn out voters, I can see her winning on Tuesday. But if the Clinton campaign lets off the gas, they’re in trouble.”

