December 8, 2020
With Donald Trump railing about how mail ballots encourage fraud and other insidious crimes associated with the this type of voting method, I would expect that some Republican voters would opt for voting in person, even in the midst a hundred year pandemic.
My curiosity led me to rank the counties by the percentage of mail ballots returned compared to their total number of registered voters. This would put all counties on an even playing field, regardless of their population. Using this comparison, little Monroe County outperformed Miami Dade on a percentage of registered voters basis.
Table 1 below lists the percent of mail votes returned as compared to their total resisted voters for each county.
| COUNTY | PERCENT MAIL BALLOTS PER REGISTERED VOTERS |
| Alachua | 32.37 |
| Baker | 16.78 |
| Bay | 23.24 |
| Bradford | 21.59 |
| Brevard | 32.49 |
| Broward | 37.44 |
| Calhoun | 17.79 |
| Charlotte | 37.28 |
| Citrus | 33.49 |
| Clay | 20.93 |
| Collier | 44.37 |
| Columbia | 22 |
| DeSoto | 19.34 |
| Dixie | 24.95 |
| Duval | 20.84 |
| Escambia | 26.46 |
| Flagler | 34.55 |
| Franklin | 30.15 |
| Gadsden | 24.62 |
| Gilchrist | 20.46 |
| Glades | 24.4 |
| Gulf | 19.5 |
| Hamilton | 21.81 |
| Hardee | 12.63 |
| Hendry | 17.23 |
| Hernando | 32.22 |
| Highlands | 29.59 |
| Hillsborough | 36.09 |
| Holmes | 20.06 |
| Indian River | 36.63 |
| Jackson | 20.93 |
| Jefferson | 24.33 |
| Lafayette | 16.05 |
| Lake | 26.21 |
| Lee | 45.76 |
| Leon | 30.91 |
| Levy | 26.05 |
| Liberty | 15.15 |
| Madison | 17.43 |
| Manatee | 38.45 |
| Marion | 27.89 |
| Martin | 36.61 |
| Miami-Dade | 32.66 |
| Monroe | 39.2 |
| Nassau | 25.14 |
| Okaloosa | 25 |
| Okeechobee | 20.9 |
| Orange | 32.29 |
| Osceola | 31.99 |
| Palm Beach | 38.01 |
| Pasco | 31.43 |
| Pinellas | 48.91 |
| Polk | 28.47 |
| Putnam | 17.76 |
| Santa Rosa | 20.91 |
| Sarasota | 41.52 |
| Seminole | 30.96 |
| St. Johns | 27.41 |
| St. Lucie | 34.26 |
| Sumter | 38.65 |
| Suwannee | 22.17 |
| Taylor | 24.2 |
| Union | 15.78 |
| Volusia | 35.86 |
| Wakulla | 22.21 |
| Walton | 20.16 |
| Washington | 17.63 |
The Top Five Counties are Pinellas at number one, followed by Lee County, Collier County, Sarasota County, and Sumter County. So what do these counties have in common?
Surprisingly, these five counties have a high proportion of registered Republicans. In Pinellas County, virtually half of the county’s vote went to Trump. The same is true of Sarasota County, where Trump won by 1.5% and Trump carried Collier by 25%. In Monroe County he won by 9 points and Lee County by 20 percent.
In the chart below, I list the top ten mail-in ballot Counties. The only two county’s on the top ten list that Biden won were Palm Beach and Broward Counties, which finished 8th and 9th respectively.
| COUNTY | PERCENT MAIL BALLOTS |
| Charlotte | 37.29 |
| Broward | 37.51 |
| Palm Beach | 38.06 |
| Manatee | 38.51 |
| Sumter | 38.67 |
| Monroe | 39.4 |
| Sarasota | 41.62 |
| Collier | 44.46 |
| Lee | 45.86 |
| Pinellas | 49.05 |
But Democrats did beat the Republicans in the total number of mail ballots with 5,303,254 to the Republicans’ 5,169,012, a difference of 134, 242 ballots counted.
It’s obvious from this list that Trump’s concern about fraud in mail-in ballots was not shared by many Republicans. Otherwise he might have lost the state.
So which state won Doctor Politics first Presidential Quadrennial Election Mail In Ballots
Award? Pinellas County with a remarkable 49% of registered voters sending in mail ballots in the Florida 2020 Election!
That’s a record that will be hard to beat, at least without a Small Pox Pandemic on election day! Make sure you have your shots and, of course, be safe…
