TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Florida is once again poised Tuesday to make history.
Millions of residents are expected to flock to the polls, which opened at 7 a.m., where their votes could decide whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton becomes the next president.
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Numbers released by the state Division of Elections early Tuesday show that 6.51 million voters have either voted early or voted by mail. There are nearly 12.9 million active registered voters.
Early voting wrapped up over the weekend, but election supervisors can continue to accept mailed in ballots until 7 p.m. on Election Day.
The new numbers show Democrats have built up a more than 90,000 vote lead over Republicans. So far 2.59 million Democrats have voted compared to 2.5 million Republicans.
More than 1.25 million voters registered with no party affiliation have also voted.
Florida could surpass its overall vote total from 2012. During that presidential election more than 8.5 million people voted.
Both Trump and Clinton have tenaciously fought to try to win the battleground state since Florida's 29 electoral college votes could tip the election.
"Florida can decide who our next president is, which will affect the nation and the world," Clinton said last week during a visit to Pasco County, just north of Tampa.
Trump too has made the stakes clear: "It's a big, big vote in the state of Florida."
The attention to this year's election appears to have sparked a record turnout. Roughly half of Florida's active registered voters had voted by mail or at an early voting site before Election Day.
Florida, with its 29 electoral college votes, could easily tip the election. Florida famously decided the 2000 election after George W. Bush won the state by just 537 votes over Al Gore following a recount that lasted several weeks.
Bush won the state easily four years later, but President Barack Obama carried the state during the last two elections. The Clinton campaign has turned to Obama as one of their biggest surrogates in Florida. The president has visited the state three times ahead of Election Day in an effort to rally support.
Florida's position as a constant swing state is due in large part to its continued population growth and the diversity of that population. The nation's third largest state has regions that range from military enclaves in the conservative Panhandle to Miami, a cosmopolitan hub connected to Latin America and Caribbean.
As the population has grown, so have the number of registered voters. Florida has gained 929,327 registered voters since the last presidential election, according to voter registration data released late last month.
About 39 percent of that gain came from Hispanics, a group that traditionally underperforms for their numbers at the ballot box. Hispanics make up just under a quarter of Florida's population of 20 million residents, but as of Oct. 18, they were 16 percent of registered voters.
Hispanics could prove to be a critical force in the final outcome. Daniel Smith, a University of Florida professor, has analyzed data that shows that the percentage of Hispanic voters participating so far this year is much higher than in 2012.
Smith's analysis shows that 11 percent - about 522,000 voters - of those who voted early four years ago were Hispanic. This year, nearly 1 million Hispanic voters have already voted or about 15 percent of the electorate.
Polls close at 7 p.m. Any voters waiting in line at that time will have the opportunity to cast a ballot.
