Primary Election, 20 August 2024

Hurricane Debby, August 2024  

Storm Debby strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane on the evening of 4 August 2024, making landfall near Steinhatchee, Florida, the next morning. After moving inland over northern Florida and southern Georgia, Debby slowed and returned to the ocean off South Carolina on 6 August. Torrential rainfall caused widespread flash and river flooding across the southeastern US, especially from Florida to the Carolinas. Strong winds toppled trees, damaged property and left over 300,000 people without power from Florida to the Carolinas – with outages extending to thousands more in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New England (NOAA 2024).  

In August, surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico were warmer than the previous year’s average. This created an expansive area of exceptionally warm sea surface temperatures, leading to high evaporation rates that helped fuel the hurricane (Barlow 2024). 

Impact on the electoral process  

Republican and Democratic Party primaries took place on 20 August 2024 to determine which candidates would run in Florida’s general election on 5 November. Florida’s primaries are “closed”, meaning the selection of a party’s candidate is open only to that party’s membership (Ballotpedia n.d.b].  

During the first day of early voting, on 5 August 2024, seven out of 67 counties in Florida canceled voting operations because of the hurricane (Perry 2024).  

Eary voting took place in all these seven counties on 6 August. Some county election officials kept early voting centres open for the maximum duration allowed by the legal farmwork, which included weekends (Perry 2024) after the hurricane.  

Voter turnout was 21.6 per cent in the Presidential Preference Primary and 22.4 per cent in the Primary – as compared with 30 per cent and 28 per cent in 2022, respectively (Florida Division of Elections n.d.). However, this is to be seen in the context of there being a dominant incumbent in the race, Rick Scott, who secured 84.4 per cent of Republican support (Ballotpedia n.d.a).