As voters throughout the Washington region head to the polls, some local election boards are reporting midday turnouts that appear poised to surpass the levels they saw in 2016, despite the fact that none of the area’s electoral votes is considered up for grabs.
As of 1:30 PM—six and a half hours before the polls close—more than 460,000 ballots had been cast in Montgomery County, for a 68 percent voter turnout, according to data provided by by Gilberto Zelaya, vice president of the county’s Board of Elections. In 2016, voter turnout reached 74 percent in the county, which overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
As of noon—seven hours before the polls close—76,055 ballots had been cast in Alexandria, for a total voter turnout of 73 percent, according to data provided by Angie Maniglia Turner, Alexandria’s director of elections and general registrar. Four years earlier, Alexandria had a total voter turnout of 83 percent, when it overwhelmingly supported Clinton.
As of 3:49 p.m.—more than four hours before the polls close—officials in DC had received 280,000 ballots, putting voter turnout in the District at 56 percent, according to Nick Jacobs, a public information officer at the DC Board of Elections. In 2016, voter turnout in DC was 60 percent.
We will update this post with additional information as it becomes available.
Luke Mullins is a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine focusing on the people and institutions that control the city’s levers of power. He has written about the Koch Brothers’ attempt to take over The Cato Institute, David Gregory’s ouster as moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, the collapse of Washington’s Metro system, and the conflict that split apart the founders of Politico.
