Whether it's because the candidates are pushing for it or just because there is a lot of interest in this year's races, many Floridians are voting early.

This past Saturday, for the first time this election season, Democrats trumped Republicans in early voting. However, Republicans still have the overall lead thanks to mail-in ballot returns, but that lead is only 7 percent.

Early voting is becoming every bit as critical and contentious as Election Day. At polls up and down the state, it's been a weekend of rallies, clashes and voting in Florida's neck-and-neck governor's race.

While Republicans hold an overwhelming lead in mail-in ballots, more Democrats have been turning out to early vote.

Ashley Kellem is one of them, but she admits the polls don't look anything like they did in 2012.

"It was empty and there were no college students in there, and that's very upsetting because these are important things that people need to be informed about and aware of and vote on," she said.

Still, when mail-in ballots and early voting are combined, the GOP holds a 7.5 percent advantage. That's down significantly from the nearly 18-point lead the party held at this point in 2010.  That year, Rick Scott won the governor's race by a mere 60,000 votes.

Overall Democratic turnout may have been higher over the weekend, but Republicans argue two days don't paint a complete picture.

The long lines of Saturday and Sunday have given way, in many places, to early voting ghost towns.

In addition, in a new memo, Scott's campaign manager writes "Republicans actually out-voted Decmorats" on the first Saturday of early voting.

That's despite the early vote campaign tour that took Scott's Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, up and down the state.

Crist adviser Kevin Cate is firing back at Team Scott.

"I think Rick Scott was used to spinning numbers when he ripped off seniors and created the largest Medicare fraud in the history of the United States, so it's no surprise that they're fudging the numbers now," he said.

No matter who's right, with eight days to go, the early numbers are far from final, but they do offer some clues about how those final numbers will look.

Voters who still want to send in a mail-in ballot need to request it soon, as the deadline for making those requests is 5 p.m. Wednesday. If you have a ballot to mail back, they need to be in by 7 p.m. on Election Night.