BATON ROUGE- Tuesday is the last day to request an absentee ballot for the 2023 primary gubernatorial election, but there is still time to send it in.

Early in-person voting ended Saturday. Out of more than 2.9 million registered voters in the state, 345,957 cast their vote—just under 12%.

"With the expected number of absentee ballots this week, we anticipate that number will be closer to what we saw in 2019 and 2022" said Deputy Secretary of State Joel Watson. 

Watson says it's only 40,000 less votes than recorded in the previous gubernatorial election in 2019, and there is a list of reasons as to why.

"It could be that some voters aren't particularly excited, don't have a candidate they really support, it could be a host of reasons," Watson said.

The demographics for this round of early voting breaks down like this: 

Political Party

-139,754 are registered Democrats 
-154,759 are registered Republicans
-51,444 registered as other

Race

-White people  246,109
-Black people  90,486 
-Other 9,362

Baton Rouge NAACP President Eugene Collins says black voter turnout continues to be a problem, but it's not just a lack of representation of different races, but also different ages.

"The result of different things politically is something that is driving young people away from voting, so if we really want to see young people at the polls, I think we need to start moving differently," Collins said.

Despite Southern and LSU both playing at home on Oct. 14, Watson expects a full turnout at the polls in Baton Rouge.  

"People will vote before the game. other people throughout the state will vote regardless of the game," Watson said.

Polls open at 7 a.m. Saturday and are open until 8 p.m.