Early voting in Miami-Dade is popular, with a surge of almost 600,000 ballots

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More than twice as many people voted at early voting locations in the past two weeks than those who returned absentee or mail-in ballots.

As of Monday morning, and early voting ended Sunday, with 597.769 people going out to one of the 33 voting locations — mostly libraries — since Oct. 21, according to the number published by the Miami-Dade Elections Department.

That’s about 50K more than the those who cast their ballots by mail or dropped them in drop boxes.

Before early voting began, Democrats were voting in higher numbers, with 115,262 votes cast compared to 79,649 cast by Republicans, which is almost the same as the 72,473 cast by independent voters. But because almost 245,000 Republicans went in person to vote, while Dems got almost 176,000 voters to the polls, they pulled ahead by more than 30,000.

Read related: Alina Garcia joins ‘angry mob’ to heckle Democrat candidate at early voting

This would be good news for Republican candidates in the constitutional races in Miami-Dade — sheriff, tax collector, supervisor of elections, etc. — except for the NPA voters.

Voters who have no party affiliation have cast 237,745 votes. And everybody knows that NPAs lean Democrat.

The numbers from the Miami-Dade Elections Department also indicate that Democrats have more confidence in mail-in ballots than either Republicans or NPAs.

Election Day is Tuesday.