Obama and Romney fight for early votes. (Neon Tommy)

The Obama campaign invested heavily in early voting, devoting much of his funds to push voters to cast their votes before the election. To illustrate the importance of the early vote, Obama himself will vote early on Thursday, becoming the first time a sitting president to do so.

The Romney campaign has taken note of the Obama strategy, which the campaign also employed successfully against John McCain in 2008, and has sought to catch up, using extra funds the candidate raised in previous weeks to push the same message to its supporters: "vote early," the Boston Globe reported.

Both campaigns hope that they will be able to “beat” each other in early voting in battleground states to boost overall support for their candidate, USA Today reported. Many voters seem to be listening.

With 12 days until Election Day, more than 7.6 million people have reportedly voted, according to the United States Election Project at George Mason University (GMU).

Republicans in Florida have taken a five percentage point advantage. About 10 percent of the likely overall electorate has already voted, the Miami Herald reported.  

In Colorado, Republicans also have a slight lead of 1.7 percentage points of the 5,500 in ballots currently cast; in Nevada, Democrats have more than a 9 percentage point lead. Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston estimated that a quarter of all people there have already cast ballots.

Voters do not register by party in Ohio, so both sides have tried to spin the swing-state's early vote to its own advantage.

While the Obama campaign released a memo Thursday saying that early voting is up from 2008 in counties that Obama won in 2008 compared to counties that McCain won, Republicans put out their own memo arguing that most voters who Democrats are getting to vote early were already inclined to vote Democrat on November 6 and the early voting will "cannibalize" their Election Day support, the memo says.

Read the full story at ABC News here.

Read more of Neon Tommy's coverage of the election here.

Reach staff reporter Jackie Mansky here.