How to get early voter turnout data in Florida
I'm hesistant to say that this is a tradition, because then I would have to do this for years to come, but this is the second election in a row where I've posted early voting reports on Instagram.
The idea to create these reports came when I was talking with a friend, Zion Lampley, to increase voter turnout on college campuses. The easiest thing we could think of was just posting daily voter turnout reports to start conversation and raise awareness.
And it worked! The reports got HUNDREDS of shares, mentions, and was even reposted on a top local Instagram account. We also received an indirect mention in the Tallahassee Democrat. A student said, “the reason why I decided to do early voting was specifically because I saw that the voting numbers on FAMU’s campus were low”.
On November 1st, early voter turnout on FAMU's campus was 6.42%. At the end of Election Day, it was 34.73%.
I don't currently live in Tallahassee, but I continue this effort because it's the least I can do to promote political education and civic engagement, especially among populations that are often overlooked.
Tutorial
Step 1: Determine FSU & FAMU precincts by looking at the Leon County Precincts Map
This step is a bit subjective, but essentially we're determining the main majority-student precincts for each college campus. This step requires having demographic knowledge of the area, or identifying the precincts that contain dorms.
- FAMU Precincts: 1309
- FSU Precincts: 2503, 1503, 1507
Step 2: Get a list of qualified, aka registered, voters that are eligible to vote in the 2024 Primary Election in Leon County
You can access the list here. It was produced by the Leon County's Supervisor of Elections Office.
Step 2.5: Filter this list and store the data in a Google Spreadsheet
For each precinct, copy the number of total registered voters. Put the data in a Google Spreadsheet. This is what it should look like when you're done:
Step 3: Download the daily early voting totals for Leon County
You can find the data here. Download the Early Voting Report for Leon County. This file will contain a list of voters that have voted early in Leon County for the 2024 Primary Election. This data is managed by the State of Florida's Division of Elections Office.
The file will be saved as a ".txt" file. You'll want to convert this into a ".csv" file. You can do that using Excel or any other spreadsheet program.
Step 3.5: Filter the data to get vote totals for the FAMU & FSU precincts
Open the file in Google Sheets. Filter the ‘AbsPrecinct’ column to get the total number of early voters per precinct. Add that data to the Google Spreadsheet.
This is what it should look like when you're done:
Step 4: Calculate the Early Voter Turnout for each college campus
We're just about done! The last step just requires you to calculate the total campus turnout (based on the defined precincts), using this basic formula: 100*(early Voters on Campus/ total Registered Voters on Campus).
Now our spreadsheet looks like this:
All done :) Hope this helped! If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email: shelby@shelbytlh.com