MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Early voting in Florida is set to start Saturday, but already nearly 10 percent of the state has cast a vote through absentee balloting, according to CBS4 news partner the Miami Herald.

According to the Herald, 925,000 Floridians have cast an absentee ballot thus far in the presidential race. Florida has roughly 9 million eligible voters in 2012.

Republicans traditionally perform much better than Democrats in absentee voting, and this year the GOP has about a 5.4 percent advantage over Democrats. However, that’s much lower than the 17 point lead the GOP had in absentee ballots cast in 2008, according to the Herald.

Still, things are expected to change starting Saturday when early voting gets underway. In 2008, there were more early voting days thanks to an executive order from then Governor Charlie Crist. But this year, the Republican legislature cut the number of early voting days down, but kept the same number of hours.

As for the absentee ballot numbers, according to the Herald they are as follows:
Voted Ballots
Republican – 414,016
Democrat – 363,881
Independent – 147,707
Total – 925,604

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