ORLANDO, Fla. -- A survey published Thursday indicates as many as 2 million Floridians will vote early this year -- one third of the total votes in 2000.
If the projection by the Orlando Sentinel holds up that is also nearly 20 percent of the state's 11.4 million registered voters.
The newspaper said that going back to Tuesday, about 1.4 million people had already voted.
The early voting includes both early polling sites and absentee ballots.
At least 718,000 had voted at early voting sites by Wednesday, according to the survey of 64 of the state's 67 counties and all of the large ones. At that pace, nearly 1.1 million people will have voted by election day Tuesday.
In addition, about 1.5 million absentee ballots have been mailed to voters in 63 counties. More than 707,000 have been completed and returned.
Elections officials expect 75 percent of the ballots to be returned, and if that's the case that figure will also reach about 1.1 million.
