If Tuesday's presidential election comes down to Florida again, how Hispanics, blacks and independents vote _ or if they stay home _ could determine who will be the next president.
"All those groups are important, and I think one of the big questions is turnout of the Hispanic voters," said Lance deHaven-Smith, a Florida State University political scientist. "If there's a big turnout ... they could tip the balance toward Hillary Clinton. If there's low turnout of Hispanics, it could have the opposite effect."
Donald Trump and Clinton clearly understand the stakes, as the candidates or their surrogates have been crisscrossing the state for weeks in a race that many polls suggest is a dead heat.
Voter turnout so far is high. More than 5.7 million Floridians _ nearly 45 percent of all registered voters _ had already cast their ballots early or by mail by Saturday, setting a record and surpassing the 4.8 million who voted before Election Day four years ago.
Each campaign has dedicated staffers and volunteers to encourage voting.
"Souls to the Polls" events across the state will take people to vote after church on Sunday, hoping to boost black turnout.
The African-American early vote, key to Obama's victories in Florida in 2008 and 2012, has been lagging behind those elections in the 2016 early vote so far.
Through Thursday, the 11th day of early voting this year, less than 443,000 black voters had gone to the polls, a turnout of 25.8 percent, state records show. About 537,000 registered African-Americans, or 33.1 percent, participated in the eight days of in-person early voting in 2012.
Obama has made direct appeals to African-American voters, but whether he can bring them out to vote for Clinton is yet to be seen.
"As the first black president, he really inspired and mobilized the black community to come out," said University of Central Florisa political science professor Aubrey Jewett. "But having Barack Obama ask people to vote for Hillary is not the same as Barack Obama saying, 'vote for me.'"
State Sen. Audrey Gibson, a Jacksonville Democrat who has long supported Clinton, compared Obama's first election in 2008 with the thrill of riding a bicycle for the first time. Future rides seem less dramatic by comparison, she said.
"It's nothing personal against Hillary Clinton," Gibson told News Service of Florida. "It's just that it has a different feel."
But U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., was confident that African-Americans would make up the early voting gap by the end of Sunday.
"I've spent time in the black community (in Florida)," Lewis said at a Clinton rally in Sanford last week. "Ministers will go to their pulpits on Sunday and get people to go out and vote, the same way people are telling people all across Amer
The Hispanic early vote in Florida is happening at a historic pace.
Through just the first 11 days of early voting, nearly 438,000 Hispanics had gone to the polls statewide, compared with 267,000 in 2012. About 42 percent were Democrats, 29 percent were independents and 28 percent Republicans.
Nationally, an independent research group called Latino Decisions projected that 13.1 million to 14.7 million Hispanics would vote in 2016, 3 to 5 percent more than in 2012.
Justin Gross, the group's chief statistician, said polls have found more than 70 percent of Latinos "believe 2016 is more important to vote than any previous election."
That could be bad news for Trump, whose talk about Mexican "rapists" and hard-line stance on immigration has turned off many in the Hispanic community.
Hispanics are "an increasingly powerful voting bloc, and it's not as fractured as it used to be," said Daniel Smith, a University of Florida political scientist. "It's become more homogenous, because of Donald Trump."
Jewett said many Puerto Rican and Cuban voters have taken Trump's comments as an attack on the Hispanic community more broadly, which may explain why Obama's final stop in Florida to encourage turnout will be in Kissimmee, a heavily Hispanic area.
"Osceola County and Kissimmee in particular are hotbeds for Puerto Rican voters," Jewett said. "They're a hot commodity in this voting environment. Their numbers have grown and they're considered in play."
Independents could have a big say in the election because of their burgeoning numbers. But figuring out how they will vote can be tricky.
Nonpartisan voters have become the fastest-growing group of first-time voters in Florida this year, state records show. There are 3.7 million of them in the state, with nearly 300,000 registering to vote this year through Sept. 30.
But people who think of themselves as independent might not vote that way.
"The theory is that a lot of people say they're independent, and then they vote straight (party-line) tickets," said pollster J. Ann Selzer of Selzer & Co.
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(Charles Minshew contributed to this report.)
