President Bush and John Kerry will return to the Tampa Bay area Sunday as more than 100,000 paid operatives and volunteers scour America's largest battleground state to mobilize every last supporter.
The candidates will hold dueling Halloween rallies that are expected to be their last stops in Florida before Election Day.
The president will arrive first, at a morning rally at Legends Field in Tampa. Kerry appears Sunday night, at Curtis Hixon Park in downtown Tampa.
A Kerry campaign official dismissed the suggestion that Halloween night is a less than ideal time to draw big crowds.
"Sure it is," campaign spokesman Matt Miller said. "Because everyone's scared about the prospect of four more years of George Bush."
The Bush-Cheney campaign has its own holiday campaign message in the form of orange and black signs: "President Kerry - wow, that's scary."
Kerry will campaign today in Orlando, West Palm Beach and Miami, his 26th day in Florida since March. In Miami, Kerry will be joined by rock star Bruce Springsteen.
The president will make his 19th Florida visit starting in Orlando on Saturday night. The next day, he'll be in Tampa - joined by retired Gen. Tommy Franks - and in Miami and Gainesville.
With one-tenth of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, Florida again has emerged as an unpredictable and potentially pivotal part of the national election.
By most accounts, losing Florida's 27 electoral votes could doom Bush's prospects of a second term.
Both camps are cautiously optimistic. The Bush campaign pointed to recent Gallup and Los Angeles Times polls that show Bush leading Florida by seven or eight percentage points, respectively. Other recent polls point to a narrow lead for Kerry or a dead heat.
"It's going right down to the wire again in Florida. In this kind of race, with so few voters left undecided, it comes down to three things - turnout, turnout and turnout," said Clay Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Quinnipiac's Oct. 22-26 poll found Bush and Kerry tied with support from 44 percent of registered voters and Ralph Nader with 1 percent.
Among Floridians deemed likely voters, Bush led 49 percent to 46 percent, a statistical tie.
More than 1-million people already have cast their votes in Florida, either with in-person early voting or by absentee ballots. Quinnipiac found that among the 16 percent of voters who said they had already voted, Kerry led Bush 56 percent to 39 percent.
Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, dismissed that finding. "In early voting, the Democrats are doing better than we are," he said. "In the absentee ballots, we are doing better than the Democrats are. When you add the two together, we are doing better than the Democrats."
Months ago, Republicans and Democrats alike launched grass roots campaigns unprecedented in scale; over the final days of the campaign those have been ramped up to full throttle.
Tens of thousands of people are knocking on doors, driving people to early voting offices and repeatedly phoning targeted voters to urge them to vote early.
Recorded "robo-calls" are hitting Democratic phones, from everyone from former President Clinton to tennis star Martina Navratilova to actor Danny DeVito. Republican calls are coming from the likes of former New York Mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani and from Gov. Jeb Bush and his son, George P. Bush.
The numbers are staggering. The Bush campaign counts more than 100,000 Florida volunteers, 150 full-time campaign staffers and some 700 out-of-state volunteers working to turn out supporters.
Kerry's campaign counts more than 45,000 Florida volunteers, 350 full-time campaign staffers and 1,500 part-time paid canvassers.
"We're hoping for as high a turnout as possible, because we think that benefits us," said Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign, dismissing conventional wisdom that high turnout is better for Democrats.
"This has been a very close race since John Kerry won the nomination, and it will be a close race on Tuesday," said Miller, the Kerry campaign spokesman. "We think there will be record turnout, and we think that benefits us."
Times staff writer Bill Adair contributed to this report. [Last modified October 28, 2004, 23:49:27]
