Clay County's Biggest, Fastest-Growing Precincts Turned Out the Least For Early Voting
Fleming Island voted at nearly twice the rate of the Oakleaf corridor, which holds more than a third of the county's registered voters.
Clay County voters cast 20,131 ballots before Tuesday’s primary election, according to figures released by the Supervisor of Elections office at the close of early voting Saturday — a pre-Election Day turnout of about 13.1 percent of the county’s 153,792 active registered voters.
Republicans accounted for 13,586 of those ballots, or 67.5 percent. Democrats cast 4,979, or 24.7 percent. Voters registered with no party affiliation cast 1,367, and minor-party voters cast 199.
Those figures matter beyond the partisan primaries, because three Clay County School Board seats — Districts 1, 4 and 5 — appear on every ballot in the county regardless of party.
Clay’s five school board members are elected countywide on a nonpartisan basis, with each member required to reside in a different geographic district. Under Florida law, a school board candidate who wins a majority in the primary is elected outright.
Districts 1 and 4 each drew exactly two candidates, meaning both seats will almost certainly be decided Tuesday, with no November runoff.
Which makes the composition of this electorate consequential.
Share of the active roll vs. share of early ballots cast:
Republican — 57.1 percent of registered voters, 67.5 percent of ballots
Democratic — 20.0 percent of registered voters, 24.7 percent of ballots
No party affiliation — 18.9 percent of registered voters, 6.8 percent of ballots
Other — 4.0 percent of registered voters, 1.0 percent of ballots
Voters with no party affiliation make up nearly one in five registered voters in Clay County. They are casting roughly one in fifteen of the ballots that will decide three school board seats.
Figures in this article are drawn from the Supervisor of Elections’ early voting statistics released Aug. 15 and its July precinct summary of active and inactive registration dated Aug. 3. All turnout percentages are calculated against active registered voters, matching the office’s own methodology. Ballot totals do not include Election Day voting on Aug. 18, and mail ballots will continue to be accepted until 7 p.m. that day.
The Turnout Gap Is Not About Being Locked Out
Florida is a closed primary state: voters may cast ballots only in the partisan contests of the party with which they are registered. That fact is often invoked to explain low independent turnout — and it is a real constraint. But it does not explain what happened in Clay County this month, because NPA voters were not shut out.
A comparison of the three sample ballots shows what each voter received:
Republican ballot — 7 contests, 26 candidates
Democratic ballot — 8 contests, 22 candidates
Nonpartisan (NPA) ballot — 3 contests, 7 candidates
Republican voters saw an open-seat governor’s race with 11 candidates, a four-candidate U.S. Senate primary, contested races for chief financial officer and commissioner of agriculture, and all three school board races. Democratic voters saw a six-candidate governor’s race, a two-candidate Senate primary, a three-way primary for the congressional seat in District 4, contested CFO and agriculture races, and the same three school board contests. Notably, no congressional primary appeared on the Republican ballot.
NPA voters received a ballot containing the three school board races and nothing else — three genuinely contested elections for seats governing a district that serves roughly 39,000 students and commands the largest single line in most Clay County property tax bills.
They turned out at 4.70 percent.
By comparison, Democrats turned out at 16.20 percent of active registration and Republicans at 15.47 percent. Had NPA voters participated at the Republican rate, they would have cast about 4,500 ballots instead of 1,367 — roughly 3,100 additional votes in three school board races that may be decided by far fewer.
The gap is not a question of access. Every NPA voter in Clay County was mailed a ballot or offered one with three real choices. The overwhelming majority declined.
Democrats Out-Turned Republicans — Slightly
The 67.5 percent Republican share of the early vote reflects registration, not enthusiasm. Republicans hold 57.1 percent of Clay County’s active roll. Measured as a rate, Democrats voted at 16.20 percent and Republicans at 15.47 percent — a Democratic edge of about three-quarters of a percentage point.
The ballots make that comparison more meaningful than it might otherwise be. Both parties had contested primaries at the top of the ticket, and if anything the Republican ballot carried the heavier draw: an open governor’s race with 11 names and a four-way Senate contest.
Democrats had a smaller gubernatorial field and a two-candidate Senate race, offset by a contested congressional primary Republicans did not have.
That said, primary turnout rates are shaped by more than ballot length — party organization, mail programs, and the perceived competitiveness of individual races all contribute.
The finding here is narrow but defensible: Republicans produced two-thirds of Clay County’s early ballots because they have the voters, not because they showed up at a higher rate.
The Fastest-Growing Part of the County Voted Least
Turnout across Clay County’s 48 precincts ranged from 7.5 percent to 21.8 percent, with a median of 13.5 percent. Eight precincts came in below 10 percent.
Turnout by region, with ballots cast and active registered voters:
Fleming Island (400s) — 17.9 percent · 3,945 ballots from 22,065 voters
Orange Park (200s) — 15.0 percent · 2,670 ballots from 17,858 voters
Green Cove Springs area (600s) — 13.0 percent · 2,868 ballots from 22,073 voters
Middleburg/CR 220 (300s) — 12.7 percent · 1,808 ballots from 14,194 voters
Lake Asbury/south Middleburg (500s) — 12.7 percent · 1,641 ballots from 12,958 voters
Keystone Heights/Penney Farms (700s) — 12.6 percent · 1,462 ballots from 11,573 voters
Oakleaf/Argyle/west Orange Park (100s) — 10.8 percent · 5,737 ballots from 53,071 voters
The 100-series precincts hold 34.5 percent of Clay County’s active registered voters — more than twice any other region — and produced the county’s lowest turnout by nearly two points.
The Oakleaf corridor also has the county’s highest NPA registration, at 20.9 percent, which offers an obvious explanation: more voters there had a three-race ballot rather than a seven- or eight-race one. But the data does not support that explanation either.
Recalculating turnout using only registered Democrats and Republicans as the denominator — setting the NPA question aside entirely — Oakleaf rises to 14.4 percent while Fleming Island rises to 22.6 percent. The gap does not close. It widens, from 7.1 percentage points to 8.1.
Oakleaf’s registered partisans, holding the same full-length ballots as everyone else, are voting less than partisans elsewhere in the county.
One Precinct Holds 6.8 Percent of the County’s Voters
Precinct 113, which votes at Oakleaf Baptist Church, contains 10,472 active registered voters — 42 percent more than the next-largest precinct in Clay County and nearly 29 times the size of the smallest, Precinct 700 at Kingsley Lake Civic Center, which has 363.
Precinct 113 turned out at 10.3 percent, producing 1,077 ballots. Had it voted at the countywide rate, it would have produced roughly 1,371 — the largest single-precinct shortfall in the county. It is also Clay’s most politically balanced large precinct, with 4,001 registered Democrats, 3,409 Republicans and 2,567 NPA voters.
The lowest turnout in the county belonged to Precinct 128 at Calvary Methodist Church, at 7.5 percent — 142 ballots from 1,893 active voters. Precinct 128 also carries Clay’s highest inactive-voter rate, at 30.9 percent.
At the other end, Penney Farms Town Hall led the county at 21.8 percent, followed by three Fleming Island precincts: River Christian Church at 20.5 percent, Orange Cove Seventh-day Adventist at 20.1 percent and Hibernia Baptist Church at 19.3 percent.
A Reversal in How Each Party Votes
Countywide, 7,681 ballots arrived by mail (38.2 percent) and 12,447 were cast in person at early voting sites (61.8 percent). Three provisional ballots were cast.
Broken out by party, the split reverses:
Democratic — 51.0 percent by mail, 49.0 percent in person
Republican — 31.0 percent by mail, 69.0 percent in person
No party affiliation — 60.1 percent by mail, 39.9 percent in person
Other — 52.3 percent by mail, 47.7 percent in person
Republicans in Clay County are now the in-person early voting party, and Democrats are the mail party — an inversion of the pattern that held in Florida for most of the two decades before 2020, when Republicans built and dominated the state’s absentee operation.
The pattern appears geographically as well. Mail share by precinct ranged from 27.1 percent at Black Creek Church of Christ to 70.5 percent at Penney Farms Town Hall.
Precinct 606 at First Presbyterian Church in Green Cove Springs — one of the county’s more Democratic precincts, and its fourth-largest — ran 70.0 percent mail, casting 625 of its 893 ballots that way.
It is worth noting that NPA voters, whose three-race ballot gave them the least reason to make a trip, were the most mail-reliant group of all at 60.1 percent.
Early Voting Built to a Final-Day Surge
In-person early voting ran Aug. 8 through Aug. 15. Daily in-person totals:
Saturday, Aug. 8 — 1,284
Sunday, Aug. 9 — 740
Monday, Aug. 10 — 1,405
Tuesday, Aug. 11 — 1,519
Wednesday, Aug. 12 — 1,244
Thursday, Aug. 13 — 1,501
Friday, Aug. 14 — 1,924
Saturday, Aug. 15 — 2,830
The final Saturday produced more than twice the volume of any other day and nearly four times the opening Sunday, the slowest of the period. Counting mail ballots received the same day, Aug. 15 accounted for 3,232 ballots — 16.1 percent of all pre-Election Day voting in a single day.
Clay County operated seven early voting sites. The Health Department building on Fleming Island was the busiest, with 2,953 ballots, followed by the Orange Park Library at 2,515 and the Middleburg Civic Center at 2,174.
Ballots cast at each site, with party breakdown:
Middleburg Civic Center — 2,174 ballots · 87.2 percent Republican, 9.1 percent Democratic
Keystone Heights City Hall — 803 ballots · 83.2 percent Republican, 13.8 percent Democratic
Supervisor of Elections Office — 1,406 ballots · 82.6 percent Republican, 13.1 percent Democratic
Health Department, Fleming Island — 2,953 ballots · 79.4 percent Republican, 15.4 percent Democratic
Thrasher-Horne Conference Center — 1,251 ballots · 76.3 percent Republican, 18.4 percent Democratic
Orange Park Library — 2,515 ballots · 69.0 percent Republican, 25.1 percent Democratic
Eagle Landing Residents Club — 1,348 ballots · 45.3 percent Republican, 46.6 percent Democratic
Eagle Landing was the only site in the county where Democratic in-person voters outnumbered Republicans, and only narrowly. Its 628 Democratic ballots were the most of any site — more than the Health Department, Supervisor of Elections office, and the Middleburg and Keystone Heights sites combined.
Nearly 31,000 Voters Are Listed as “Inactive” — and the List Skews NPA
Beyond the 153,792 active voters, Clay County’s rolls carry 30,992 inactive registrations, or 16.8 percent of the total.
Inactive status is widely misunderstood. Under Florida Statute 98.065, failing to vote is not a penalty. A voter is designated inactive after being sent an address confirmation final notice and either failing to return the enclosed postage-prepaid form within 30 days or having the notice returned undeliverable. The notice is triggered by U.S. Postal Service change-of-address data, returned non-forwardable county mail, or address information from jury notices, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, or similar sources. In practice, it is a test of mail deliverability — a proxy for people who have moved.
There is one exception: in odd-numbered years, supervisors using the postal-data method must also send final notices to voters who have not voted in the two preceding general elections or any intervening election and have not updated their registration in that time. 2025 was such a year.
Inactive voters may still vote, and doing so restores them to active status. But a voter who does not vote, request a mail ballot or update their registration by the second general election after being listed is removed from the statewide system entirely and must re-register.
The composition of the inactive list does not mirror the active roll:
Republican — 57.1 percent of the active roll, 36.5 percent of the inactive roll
No party affiliation — 18.9 percent of the active roll, 36.2 percent of the inactive roll
Democratic — 20.0 percent of the active roll, 24.7 percent of the inactive roll
Other — 4.0 percent of the active roll, 2.6 percent of the inactive roll
NPA voters are nearly twice as likely to appear on the inactive list as their share of registration would predict. Republicans are roughly a third less likely. If inactive status functions primarily as a measure of residential mobility, the disparity is consistent with a younger, more transient population that also registers NPA at higher rates — but the size of the gap invites a closer look.
Geographically, the inactive rate is highest in the 200-series Orange Park precincts at 20.1 percent and in the 100-series Oakleaf corridor at 18.8 percent. It is lowest on Fleming Island at 12.8 percent — the same region with the county’s highest turnout.
Florida law requires each supervisor to certify to the Department of State twice a year the number of address confirmation requests sent, voters designated inactive, and voters removed from the rolls. Those certifications are public records.
All Eyes on Tuesday
Polls open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 18. Election Day voters must vote at their assigned precinct. Mail ballots must be received by the Supervisor of Elections office — not postmarked — by 7 p.m. Tuesday, meaning the 7,681 mail figure reported at the close of early voting will grow.
School Board Districts 1 and 4, each a two-candidate race, will be resolved outright. District 5, with three candidates, advances to the November general election only if no candidate clears a majority.