There’s a lot more early voting than the last midterm. Which party is doing better?

Paula Aguilar is a Democrat who says she doesn’t always vote in midterm elections. But she voted this time, for Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson, at an early voting site in Broward County on Sunday.

The question is whether there are enough voters like Aguilar to produce something that hasn’t happened in Florida in 24 years: a midterm victory for Democrats.

As early voting reaches the midway point in larger counties, overall turnout by both parties is significantly above past midterms. The state is on pace to set a record for turnout in a non-presidential election.

Republicans still have an advantage in overall turnout with 42 percent of all early and mail ballots. But Democrats, at 40 percent, appear to be closing the gap, and they retook the overall lead in early voting Sunday.

Independents comprise 27 percent of the electorate, but so far make up 17 percent of actual voters.

The electorate in Florida is highly polarized left and right, and most polls show a very narrow slice of likely voters remains undecided.

Aguilar, who brought her young son to a library in Plantation on Sunday, decided to make her voice heard in this midterm, making her exactly the type of voter Democrats have been urging to vote.

She’s also a younger voter (38), in an election dominated by older voters so far. Born in Chile, she’s also Hispanic in an election in which Hispanics so far are under-performing compared to their share of the electorate..

“I’m worried,” Aguilar said when asked about her party’s chances of victory on Nov. 6.

She said she was spurred to vote because of her intense dislike for President Trump. “These attacks,” she said. “It’s a very divided time. Every single day he says something shocking and appalling.”

Aguilar also lives in Broward, a county where Democrats have stayed home in droves in past midterms.

More Democrats are voting — and more Republicans are, too.

Republican Louise Kilpatrick cast her vote on Saturday for Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott at Fort Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge Mall.

“I’m a conservative,” said Kilpatrick, who home-schools her daughter. “So I pretty much stay with my party unless it’s something outrageous.”

Older white voters are crucial to a Republican victory next week, and to four more years of party dominance in the nation’s third most populous state.

Don Tennant, 52, who works for a soda bottling company, also voted for DeSantis at the Coral Ridge Mall early voting site.

“I just went with my party, and that happens to be Republican,” Tennant said. “I voted true that way.”

African-Americans so far account for about 11 percent of early and mail voters, and they make up nearly 14 percent of the electorate. Hispanics so far account for 12 percent of voters and they make up nearly 17 percent of Florida’s electorate. (The totals, from University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith, do not include Palm Beach County.)

Those turnout figures don’t entirely support the contention of Maurice Thompson, a sixth-grade teacher who also voted early with his son, Alexander, in tow at the African-American Research Center in Fort Lauderdale.

“Everybody’s excited about this election,” Thompson said. “Even the people who don’t pay attention are paying attention.”

This story was originally published October 29, 2018 at 2:45 PM.