84.21% of voters registered for election cast their ballots, as of tally released late in afternoon of Nov. 6
Just before 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, Sarasota County voters surpassed the General Election turnout for 2020, The Sarasota News Leader observed.
A dynamic webpage created by Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Ron Turner’s staff showed that the number of voters by that time on Tuesday reflected 81% of those who were registered to participate in the 2024 General Election.
For the November 2020 General Election, the final percentage was 80.09%, the staff of the Supervisor of Elections Office staff noted in a fact sheet distributed on Nov. 4.
In response to a News Leader inquiry on Nov. 6, Paul Donnelly, director of communications and voter outreach for the Supervisor of Elections office, wrote in an email, “Without digging through a lot of archives, it’s hard to say where yesterday’s turnout ranks historically. I can tell you that it was the second highest turnout by percentage since 1980. Yesterday ended with a turnout of 84.18%. In 1992, the turnout was 86%.”
Just before noon on Nov. 6, the turnout had been bumped up a bit to 84.2%. Then, by 4:15 p.m. on Nov. 6, the figure had crept up to 84.21%. with total turnout put at 280,796.
Asked whether the Elections Office staff encountered any problems, Donnelly added, “No problems of note. A lot of the success of yesterday is due to our poll workers and the fact that so many people voted early, thus reducing the number of voters on Election Day.”
The last precincts to report, he told the News Leader, were 407; 227; and 423. “I’m not sure of when the last precinct upload was,” he added, “but I believe it was after 9 p.m.”
Precinct 227 was located at the Church of the Palms on Bee Ridge Road in Sarasota, while Precinct 407 was relocated temporarily to that church, the Supervisor of Elections Office precinct list said when the News Leader reviewed it on Nov. 6.
Precinct 423 is set up at the Gulf Gate Library, which is located at 7112 Curtiss Ave. in Sarasota.
Among other details of the unofficial Nov. 5 results in Sarasota County, the highest number of people casting ballots in a given race was for the President of the United States. The total was 278,746, out of the 333,464 citizens eligible to participate in the voting.
The second-highest count — 275,234 — was for the U.S. Senate race, in which incumbent Republican Rick Scott defeated Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
In third place came the U.S. House race for District 17, in which incumbent Republican Greg Steube captured 61.15% of the votes. His Democratic challenger was Manny Lopez. The unofficial results do show that 208 write-in votes were cast in that race, representing 0.08% of the total votes cast — 272,207.
In the Sarasota County Tax Collector’s race, 268,317 votes were cast, the unofficial results note. Two-term Republican County Commissioner Michael Moran beat long-time Tax Collector Barbara Ford-Coates by taking 51.27% of the votes cast. For decades, Ford-Coates has been the sole Democrat to serve as one of the county’s constitutional officers, which include the sheriff and the clerk of the Circuit Court and county comptroller. (See the related article in this issue.)
The fact sheet that the Supervisor of Elections Office distributed on Nov. 4 offered the following other information:
- Total number of precincts —103.
- Polling Locations — 84.
- Registered voters(as of the Oct. 7 book closing) — Democrats, 87,222; Republicans, 158,102; “Other,” 88,140.
- Vote-by-mail ballots mailed as of Nov. 3 — 115,729; ballots returned as of Nov. 3 — 96,136.
• Early voting: ballots cast as of Nov. 3 — 121,574.