Gables Home Page has the early results from 2,818 absentee ballots, which will be a significant fraction of the total ballots cast (“By 3 p.m. more than 3,000 residents had cast ballots, a little over 10 percent of the city’s 29,679 registered voters.”).
The absentee voters — thought by many to be significantly skewed to an older and more Hispanic vote — went Cason 40%, Slesnick 37%, and Korge only 23%. In Group 4, Quesada was crushing with 53%. Both Rosenblatt and Sanabria were far behind with 18% and 17%.
So presumably this means Quesada wins, because I think he’ll do well on the in-person vote too. Whether it means Cason wins is much harder to say without knowing how much of an absentee effort Slesnick made, and how different the in-person vote is from the absentee. Arguably, there might be more Slesnick voters turning up in person, maybe enough to turn the tide. The 3% gap between them, after all, is only 85 votes, not enough to rest comfortably on.
Polls closed over an hour ago. Where online do they report the results? There’s nothing evident at the Miami-Dade election results page, nor on the City of Coral Gables web page.
Update: I just read here that there were actually 4,683 absentee votes as of Monday, which would mean the numbers above are only partial even for the absentees. If correct, that also means that there could well be more absentee voters than in-person voters, in which case maybe these numbers will hold up after all?
1400 absentee ballots for Quesada, Cason still in the lead……..
FYI..if you are a Quesada supporter, the campaign is having a post election party at John Martin’s. I understand that Slesnick is having his celebration at the Marriot (not sure if the Slesnick party is open or not).
FYI if you are a Cason supporter, Celebration and Coral Gables Womens Club, Sunset Drive.