Word: florida
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...good news for Romney is that in the larger, more diverse state of Florida, most voters won't have a chance to make that up-close judgment. If Romney is able to surge past John McCain here in the state's primary on Jan. 29 - and most recent polls have McCain with a very slight lead - it will most likely be due to his ability to spend freely on expensive advertising throughout the state...
...advantage it has built among the orange groves and shuffleboard courts--a grass-roots army of over 6,000 volunteers who have been making more than a million phone calls to get Giuliani supporters to vote early. If historical trends hold, roughly one-third of the Republican votes in Florida will be cast before Election Day, either by absentee ballot or by "early voting" at polling places set up across the state...
...only GOP candidate with a comparable ground operation in Florida is Mitt Romney, who also boasts campaign offices and thousands of volunteers across the state. The smaller-dollar campaigns of Mike Huckabee and John McCain are only just now beginning to fly in staff and open offices. If the race remains close, experts say, the early-voting push mastered by Giuliani could prove decisive. "If you have a good organization and you have a multicandidate field," says political scientist Darryl Paulson of the University of South Florida, "it could clearly be the margin of difference in the campaign...
...lackluster campaign performance appears to be taking its toll in the 21 states that will select Republican delegates on Feb. 5, the day that may very well decide the GOP nominee. After months of leading the field, Giuliani is in a tight race for first in Florida and trails McCain by double digits in national polls. January surveys have repeatedly shown Giuliani trailing in his home state of New York...
Giuliani advisers will tell you these past few weeks are nothing more than the darkest hours before a Florida dawn. But they, like everyone else, still don't know whether GOP voters will rally around a candidate who chose to sit out the first four weeks of the campaign...