In case you missed it, Barack Obama dropped in on Miami on Friday afternoon.

A day later, Donald Trump planned to hang out with the good folks in Pensacola.

Naturally, these appearances indicate the importance nationally of the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races in Florida. They were also obvious nods to how critical South Florida is for Democrats and the Panhandle is for Republicans.

As for voters in Tampa Bay?

You'll just have to be content with actually deciding the election.

That's probably an overstatement, but not by much. Even if it seems like the famed I-4 corridor is not getting as much attention as usual, voters around here could still have the final say in this election.

In a twisted way, it explains why Obama and Trump spent the final weekend of the campaigns hundreds of miles away. It's because Tampa Bay voters are less predictable, and the Democrats and Republicans would rather devote their time goosing turnout in their strongholds.

"The parties are going after their base, and it makes sense to focus on the known quantities,'' said Daniel Smith, political science professor at the University of Florida. "But at the end of (election) day (Tuesday), we're going to see around 1 million independent voters, and that's not an insignificant number. Those voters are the great unknown in this election.''

A good chunk of those independent and third-party voters are in Central Florida, as well as a lot of swing voters who do not automatically vote along party lines.

And if you don't think those no-party or renegade voters matter, you might want to check out the 2016 presidential election results in Pasco County.

Based on voter registration statistics in 2016, you might have expected the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton to be fairly close in Pinellas County and for Clinton to have an 8-point advantage in Hillsborough. And that's pretty much the way the numbers broke.

Pasco's numbers indicated Trump would have a 7-point head start, but the results turned out to be absurdly lopsided. Trump ended up with a 21-point victory in Pasco, suggesting he got an outsized chunk of the county's 98,000 independent voters.

Here's another way of looking at it:

Trump's margin of victory in Pasco (almost 52,000 votes) completely wiped out Clinton's advantage in Hillsborough (41,000), though Hillsborough had a half-million more registered voters.

That's why it's dangerous to read too much into the record turnout this year. Republicans have held a slight lead throughout much of the mail/early voting period, but it doesn't come close to matching the nearly 800,000 independents and third-party voters who have already turned in ballots.

"This is the classic reason that I love this state,'' said Steve Schale, a leading Democratic strategist in Florida. "People on Twitter keep asking me if I'm freaking out about the early numbers. No! Nobody should ever feel comfortable in Florida because it's almost always going to come down to a point or two, and it's difficult to say which way it will break.''

So is it possible to get any kind of gauge on how independents will go in 2018? Well, some polls say they are leaning toward the Democrats. And Smith points out that 23 percent of independent voters in Florida are in the 18-29 age group, which is a high percentage for that demographic and would typically suggest a more left-leaning crowd.

However, Smith said, only a small percentage of those 18- to 29-year-olds have actually shown up for early voting.

In other words, take nothing for granted.

Going into this election, there were more than a half-million independents in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties combined.

Those voters were excluded from the primaries in August and had no say when it came to Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis landing at the top of the gubernatorial ballot.

The parties may be making their last-minute stands in South Florida and the Panhandle, but if enough independents show up in Tampa Bay, they could decide this election.