If you take into account just the Osceola County voters who voted by mail or went to one of the county’s nine early voting sites that opened on Oct. 24, then 28 percent of Osceola’s “active eligible voters” turned out to the polls.
For reference, total registered voter turnout was 17.78 percent for the Aug. 23 primary.
The Osceola County Supervisor of Elections office received over 41,000 “vote by mail” ballots prior for the general election prior to Tuesday; over a thousand more arrived by mail or were hand-delivered on Tuesday, and were counted Tuesday night along with the ballots cast on Election Day after polls closed.
Over 14 days of early voting, 29,798 voters cast ballots that way, an average of over 2,100 per day. Understandably, the busiest days were Nov. 3-6, which averaged over 3,000 voters per day and saw a high of 4,337 on Sunday, Nov. 6, the final day.
Despite some rain, a precursor to Tropical Storm Nicole, Election Day voters pushed the turnout to over 40 percent by lunchtime Tuesday. By 7 p.m., over 31,000 had voted. It all added up to a total of over 103,000 ballots cast among nearly 255,000 eligible and registered voters, among Osceola County’s population of around 403,000 estimated residents as of 2022. That means that about 63 percent of county residents are registered to vote.
For reference, turnout in the 2020 general election, a Presidential election year, was 72.67 percent of roughly 239,000 registered voters.
