Campaign Finance: State and some local candidates with primary opponents are required to file 8-day-out campaign finance reports tomorrow. These include contributions received and expenditures made between January 26 and February 24. We expect the summary totals for these reports to appear online during the day Tuesday, and the full reports will be available within the next day or so.

We will update our Crib Sheets during the day on Tuesday and send out one or more Breaking News alerts to provide our subscribers with our initial thoughts on those totals. During the next day or two, we will take a close look at the sources of contributions for candidates in what we determined are hot races.

Candidates must file daily pre-election reports to disclose any contributions in excess of $1K from a single source between February 25 and March 5. Those reports are required to be filed on the next business day after receiving the contribution. We will check these periodically for the hot races.

Early Voting for the March 6 primary election continues until March 2. Turnout in the 15 counties with the most registered voters pushed past 3.3% on Saturday. Three counties have not yet reported their in-person totals for that day. We have data from a handful of counties for today, which historically has the lightest turnout of any day during the early voting period. We expect to have full data for the weekend sometime tomorrow.

Republican turnout through Friday is the second-highest through four days in state history, trailing only 2016, and is about 7% ahead of 2014 and 43% ahead of 2010. Democratic turnout is likewise the second-highest through four days in state history, trailing 2008, and is 75% ahead of 2014 and 121% ahead of 2010.

While an improvement over past primary elections, 2018 primary turnout nonetheless pales to recent general elections. More than twice as many people voted during the first four days of early voting in the 2014 general election, and more than six times as many people voted by now in 2016.

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