Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

Sep. 23, 2016, 3:34 PM GMT / Updated Sep. 23, 2016, 3:34 PM GMT By Hannah Hartig, John Lapinski and Rezwana Uddin

As Election Day nears, both Democratic and Republican campaigns are ramping up their efforts to get out the vote. With the rise of early and absentee voting across the country, campaigns are increasingly focused on early voting as a method of securing an early lead in the race.

One way that campaigns try to accomplish this is to motivate voters to request an absentee ballot. By tracking and analyzing these requests, campaigns get an early glimpse into how well their get-out-the-vote efforts are working in the very early stages of the campaign.

The first batch of absentee ballot request data suggests that Hillary Clinton may have an early advantage, though Donald Trump appears to be better positioned in Florida, a key swing state.

The NBC News Data Analytics Lab -- using data provided by TargetSmart — analyzed absentee ballot requests in six critical battleground states – Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The chart below shows the number of requests received so far.