{"id":446636,"date":"2026-11-04T00:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T00:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/446636\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T00:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T00:54:13","slug":"republican-voters-overtake-democrats-in-pinellas-ballot-count-by-10-a-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/446636\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican voters overtake Democrats in Pinellas ballot count by 10 a.m."},"content":{"rendered":"

Registered Republicans took the lead over Democrats in ballots cast in Pinellas County by 10 a.m. Tuesday, reversing the Democratic advantage heading into Election Day.<\/p>\n

The latest Get Out the Vote report<\/a> from Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus\u2019<\/a> Office shows over 298,000 voters had cast ballots, including over 115,000 registered Republicans and about 113,000 Democrats.<\/p>\n

Nearly 62,000 additional ballots came from voters with no party affiliation, and about 8,000 came from voters registered with minor parties.<\/p>\n

The shift follows a strong opening morning for Republicans. Out of more than 35,000 ballots recorded Tuesday, just over 16,500 came from registered Republicans while nearly 10,000 came from Democrats, an advantage that more than offset the Democratic lead built before Election Day.<\/p>\n

The figures reflect voters\u2019 party registrations, not how they voted, and do not indicate which candidates are leading.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The turnout comes as Pinellas voters decide several closely watched races, including the St. Petersburg mayoral contest<\/a> between incumbent Ken Welch and former Gov. Charlie Crist.<\/p>\n

St. Petersburg voters are also choosing City Council representatives in District 2<\/a> and District 6<\/a> and deciding whether to authorize up to $600 million in bonds for stormwater, wastewater and drinking water improvements.<\/p>\n

Countywide, voters are weighing state and federal races, including the gubernatorial contest between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly and the U.S. Senate race between Republican Ashley Moody and Democrat Angie Nixon.<\/p>\n

The turnout figures cover all of Pinellas County and do not provide a separate breakdown for St. Petersburg, where the mayoral race is nonpartisan and features two Democrats on the ballot.<\/p>\n

The Supervisor of Elections Office is scheduled to release another turnout update at 2 p.m. Polls remain open until 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Registered Republicans took the lead over Democrats in ballots cast in Pinellas County by 10 a.m. Tuesday, reversing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[47499,8131,13396,163378,596,47773,4219,202,204,203,199,201,200,24513],"class_list":["post-446636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-2026-elections","tag-democrats","tag-election-day","tag-julie-marcus","tag-pinellas-county","tag-pinellas-county-supervisor-of-elections","tag-republicans","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-voter-turnout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}