Reports from this morning are showing GOP voters outpacing Democrat voters by 2.5 to 1 in one contested county in Florida. According to Dave Wasserman, a popular election analyst who has all but called the race for Biden at this point (in other words, there’s no pro-Trump bias here), that’s being replicated across the state, with even heavily blue counties showing massive Republican turnout.

This is not unexpected in so much as there was any expectation that Democrats were going to out-vote Republicans on election day. They weren’t, but the margin being shown here and its implications are newsworthy. This is what Trump needed to happen to have a chance for re-election today.

It's not like this is unexpected, and it's an important reminder that we're going to see unprecedented partisan polarization between the early/mail batches and the Election Day batches tonight.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2020

Also keep in mind: the Election Day share of the overall FL electorate is going to be historically low this year b/c 62% of registered voters already cast ballots before EDay polls opened.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2020

With 62% of the vote already in before the first vote was cast this morning, Trump needs really large margins at the day of polls to overcome whatever deficit he may be currently sitting at. Early voting numbers favored Democrats going into today in most states. Of course, even that is an assumption, as we only know voter registration preference, not who they actually voted for. But in this case, we can make some very general assumptions, namely that Democrats came into today with a lead and that heavy turnout from this point on can only help Donald Trump. That registered Republicans are outvoting their typical splits in these counties is indicative of the possible “red wave” Trump has been predicting for Election Day. As I mentioned above, Wasserman is very bullish on Joe Biden as well. The fact that he’s hedging a bit here is another sign that things may be shifting.

Again though, no one should be making any more assumptions based on this stuff. Anything could happen, including Trump winning Florida but losing Pennsylvania and still losing the election. All of this data is very murky, and the quickest way to a broken heart is to start reading party registration data in regards to votes cast and exit polls while deciding something is “going to happen.” We just don’t know yet, and we probably won’t know until tomorrow morning. If Trump wins Florida, he’s in position to win this election. If he loses it, this thing is all but over.

If you haven’t voted yet, now is the time to suck it up, put on a jacket if it’s cold, and go wait in line. You don’t want to regret not doing your part in what is probably the most consequential election in the modern era.

(Please follow me on Twitter! @bonchieredstate)