Early voting update: Numbers up from 2012 and Nevada looking promising for Clinton

A week before the presidential election, more than 26 million US voters have cast early ballots. Those numbers are nearly double the amount of early ballots cast at this point in the 2012 election between President Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

Early voting 2016 vs 2012

About 13.5 million voters cast early ballots one week ahead of the 2012 election, according to analysis by NBC News Data Analytics Lab.

More than four million votes have been cast in 12 battleground states this year than four years ago. Data shows that 12,602,929 ballots have been cast in those states, with the biggest differences seen in Florida, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina.

NBC News also noted that Democratic-affiliated voters are outpacing their 2012 early voting performance in a number of battle states.

While Republican voters continue to outpace Democratic voters in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, the opposite can be said about Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin.

In three states—Colorado, Michigan and Virginia—Republican voters are no longer outpacing Democratic voters like they did in 2012. In Florida, however, the numbers remain tied.

A look at Nevada

Initial numbers from several battleground states have benefited Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, despite an ongoing scandal regarding her private email server. Republican nominee Donald Trump appears to be shortening the gap with Clinton, though the former secretary of state remains in safe territory.

Nevada, which voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, is a fairly close race for Clinton and Trump. According to analysis by FiveThirtyEight, Clinton has a 47% chance of winning the battleground state against a 45% chance for Trump. Despite this, early voting in the Silver State suggests Clinton is fairly safe there.

Through Tuesday (1 November), 43% of early and absentee votes were cast by registered Democrats and 37% were cast by registered Republicans. These numbers are nearly identical to early voting in 2012, where Democrats constituted 45% of the early votes in week one and Republicans made up 37%.

As FiveThirtyEight points out, winning Nevada—along with the rest of the battleground states—is crucial for a Trump win. The state offers six electoral votes, which Trump cannot afford to lose.