Democrats have narrowed the traditional GOP advantage in absentee votes. Dems face 'fight of our lives' in Fla.

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Florida Republicans are feeling increasingly optimistic that Mitt Romney will carry the biggest of swing-state prizes, and for good reason — he’s narrowly leading in most every poll here and President Barack Obama is under 50 percent in the same surveys.

The rising confidence on the right is owed to three major factors: The GOP rank and file, demoralized four years ago, are brimming with enthusiasm; independents appear to be moving away from Obama and the Florida economy, while improving, is still worse off than the country at large.


( See also: POLITICO’s swing-state map)

Both sides are continuing to make a hard push here for a simple reason: Obama can win the presidency without Florida, but he can almost certainly deny Romney a chance at 270 electoral votes by keeping the state in his column again.

And if Republicans appear to have momentum on their side, Democrats are hoping that their growing demographic advantage can help them eke out another win in an always competitive state they captured by 2.5 percentage points in 2008. Floridians love to call their state a microcosm of the country, and like America it’s becoming more diverse: there are even more minority voters this year than there were four years ago, and they’ll overwhelmingly support Obama.

( Also on POLITICO: Battleground Tracking Poll: Romney takes lead)

GOP officials don’t think that will be enough to stymie Romney’s surge, though.

“I’d give a slight edge to Romney now,” said Agricultural Commissioner and former congressman Adam Putnam, saying he’s felt “a lot better about Florida” since Romney’s performance in the first debate.

Among Republicans, the Denver debate debacle has been galvanizing.

“It’s almost like somebody flipped a switch — there’s been an explosion of bumper stickers and signs,” Putnam said, noting that many of the family minivans he sees on the road now include Romney stickers alongside soccer stickers.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama vs. Romney: How they plan to win)

If the initial debate roused partisans in the past few weeks, it is Florida’s economic state over the past four years that has created a structural challenge for the incumbent.

Unemployment here is at 8.7 percent, a considerable improvement since it was in double digits a year ago, but is still Obama’s biggest impediment.

“Seniors are struggling,” explained GOP state Sen. Mike Fasano. “The emails and phone calls I get from them come every week: They’re having a tough time staying in their homes if they still have mortgages, they can’t make the payments, or the value of their home is upside down.”

Fasano said that, despite the improving numbers, he finds the talk from Obama that things are getting better to be “baffling.”

“I’d invite him to come down to Hernando and Pasco County,” Fasano said of two hard-hit parts of his Tampa-area district.

( Also on POLITICO: Six questions that will settle the election)

Even some Democrats will concede that the combination of joblessness and foreclosures in a state where the housing and construction industry plays a major role has created a daunting set of obstacles for Obama.

“The fundamentals are difficult, though they have started to correct,” said Mitch Berger, an influential Broward County Democratic fundraiser and attorney.

“The economy here has been pretty bad, but it’s getting better,” added former Tampa-area Rep. Jim Davis, the Democratic 2006 gubernatorial standard-bearer. “Things are clearly getting better, albeit slowly. Given this environment it’s remarkable he’s still hanging in there. I think they’ve still got a shot — it’s very close.”

Obama’s saving grace, according to Berger and other Democrats, could be his ground game.

“It’ll be a battle of who can do better at getting out the vote,” explained Democrat Alex Sink, who narrowly lost the gubernatorial race here two years ago and heaped praise on Obama’s Florida organization.

Democrats have narrowed the traditional Republican advantage in absentee votes so far, but Romney officials in both Boston and Florida contend that the reduced window for early voting in the state has simply prompted Democrats to push their most committed backers to cast their ballots by mail instead.

What gives Democratic veterans the most hope is that the makeup of the state continues to change in their favor.

One top Democratic Florida strategist said that as long as they can keep the independent vote close, they’ll have a chance to win thanks to the demographics.

“The electorate will be between 2 to 3 points more nonwhite than it was four years ago,” said the strategist, noting that there are 190,000 more Hispanics and 50,000 more African-Americans since 2008.

Where both parties agree is that the race will be close and fought to the end, as has become the rule in Florida’s presidential races. There have been 33 million votes cast in Florida over the past five presidential elections and a total of just 60,000 votes have separated the two parties.

“It could go either way this time,” said Ron Sachs, a longtime Democratic PR man in Tallahassee. “Romney has a slight lead, probably, today, but it is close.”

The challenge for Obama is that he won the state narrowly under the best conceivable circumstances in 2008 and simply doesn’t have the same sort of tailwinds this time.

“You don’t see the wave of enthusiasm you saw four years ago, that’s for sure,” said Sink. “A lot of swing and Republican voters voted for Obama because they were not enamored of John McCain and thought it would be historically significant to elect the first black president. There’s room to shave off a little of what we had four years ago and still win, but we’re in the fight of our lives here.”

It would be something more than an understatement to say that GOP voters are more enthused now than they were four years ago. Romney’s rallies are growing in size as the election grows closer — a stark contrast to 2008, when McCain drew an embarrassing 1,000 people to an Election Day rally in Tampa that was set up for many thousands more.

“I only got active after we saw what was taking place in the country,” explained Ron Gaynor, who sported a Palm Beach County Tea Party polo shirt to Ann Romney’s rally in Boca Raton on Saturday. “There’s a lot of people involved today that weren’t involved at all with John McCain.”

Brett Doster, a veteran GOP strategist in the state advising Romney, said simply: “There’s a radical difference between where we are now in 2012 and where we were in 2008.”

Translated electorally, that means Romney will likely rack up bigger wins in Republican counties that McCain won only narrowly.

Take Duval County, for example, the north Florida population center that’s home to Jacksonville. McCain won there by just a single percentage point four years after George W. Bush carried the county by 16 percent. The dropoff was partly because Obama turned out more black voters, but it was also due to McCain’s weaker performance with independents and centrist Republicans.

“In 2008, traditionally Republican-leaning neighborhoods were lined with Obama signs — it was all ‘Hope and Change,’” said state GOP chairman Lenny Curry, who hails from Jacksonville. “These were the lawns of old, historic homes — lots of moderate Republicans. Now you drive by those houses and you don’t see the signs.”

State Sen. John Thrasher, himself a former state GOP chairman, represents the area in Tallahassee.

“In north Florida, we’re as strong as new rope,” said Thrasher. “I’ve been walking some neighborhoods, and I’m telling you, it’s palpable.”

Democrats counter that any drop-off they see in such regions can be made up for with better margins in strongholds such as population-heavy Democratic bulwarks like Miami-Dade, where a full 9 percent of the Florida electorate resides.

While partisans on both sides concede Romney will run up better numbers in the conservative-leaning parts of the state, what may ultimately determine his success is if he can also fare better with two Democratic-leaning groups in the state: non-Cuban Hispanics and Jewish voters.

On the first score, Florida politicos are keeping a close eye on two Orlando-area counties full of Puerto Ricans: Orange and Osceola. Obama won them each by about 20 percentage points in 2008. If his numbers sag here, Romney will be well positioned.

And further to the south, in Palm Beach and Broward counties, can Romney narrow the yawning gap with Jewish voters in the condominiums along the Atlantic that Obama enjoyed four years ago? Pro-Israel conservative groups have mounted a major effort to help him.

What seems certain is that both sides will make a hard push through Election Day. Republicans in the state are peddling chatter about Democrats reducing their footprint, but it was much noted over the weekend that, when Obama announced a 48-hour tour this week of his top targets, Florida was on the itinerary.

“I would expect to see a lot of Obama and [Vice President Joe] Biden here,” said Berger. “They might as well rent a condo.”