Early ballots surge in Fresno County for November election. Here’s the count
Nearly 65,000 registered voters in Fresno County have already cast their ballots about two weeks before the Nov. 5 general election.
Ballots were mailed to voters in the county starting on Oct. 7, and the first ballots began rolling in the next day. The Fresno County Elections Division received by mail about 45,000 ballots in the past two weeks, and nearly 20,000 were returned via ballot drop-off boxes scattered throughout Fresno and the rest of the county.
The total count of returned ballots as of Tuesday was 64,737, which represents almost 12.7% of the county’s 511,713 registered voters.
In the March primary, overall voter turnout was almost 31% in Fresno County by the time all of the votes were counted, Most of those – more than 140,000 – were vote-by-mail ballots, compared to just over 16,000 cast by voters at vote centers that were open in the days before the March 5 Election Day.
Turnout is expected to be significantly higher for the Nov. 5 general election, driven largely by interest in the presidential race between the Republican ticket of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, and the Democratic ticket headed by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
In the last presidential general election in November 2020, in which Trump was thwarted in his re-election bid by President Joe Biden, voter turnout in Fresno County was a whopping 74.7%, with 370,068 out of 495,748 registered voters casting ballots.
Voter turnout in the 2016 general election, in which Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Fresno County’s voter turnout was 66.7%.
This story was originally published October 22, 2024 at 2:31 PM.
