MIAMI, Oct 24 (AFP) - Faced with a tough and potentially key battle in Florida, the presidential candidates have made minorities a focus of their campaigns, courting each other's supporters as well as undecided voters.
President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry have made Florida one of their most frequent campaign destinations, devoting much of their attention to Hispanic, black and Jewish voters.
With opinion polls showing the candidates running a close race in the southeastern state and nationally, a few hundred votes could determine the outcome of the race as it did in 2000, when a 537-vote lead in Florida gave Bush the presidency after five weeks of legal wrangling.
"In a state where everything is close, any peeling off you can do of your opponent's base is seen as optimal," said Susan McManus, a political analyst at the University of South Florida.
Central Florida is at the heart of the battle, as it is considered to have the swing state's strongest percentage of undecided voters, including tens of thousands of Hispanics.
"Both the Democratic and the Republican parties believe that that vote is in play," said Robert Jackson, from Florida State University's political science department.
An influx of migrants from Puerto Rico, Mexico and other Latin American countries in recent years has brought Florida's Hispanic population to over three million and has gradually weakened the influence of the 1.2 million Cuban-Americans.
Long a monolithic Republican bloc, the 500,000 registered voters of Cuban descent are now less staunchly pro-Bush than they were four years ago.
The Democrats are hoping to capitalize on that, banking on studies showing younger members of the community tend to be more interested in domestic issues such as health, jobs and education than the early Cuban immigrants, who often support hardline policies toward President Fidel Castro's communist government.
Conversely, the Republicans, vaunting Bush's strong support of Israel, are trying hard to grab Jewish votes away from the Democrats.
Heavyweights regularly deployed to stump for Bush in Florida include former New York mayors Ed Koch, a Democrat who supports the president, and Rudy Giuliani, a Republican who gained near-hero status for his handling of the September 11, 2001 aftermath.
In the controversial 2000 election, only 19 percent of Florida's 500,000 Jewish voters cast a ballot for Bush. But Republicans are convinced they can do better this time around, and Democrats privately admit they are worried.
"We deserve 90 percent, and we'll get a third. That will guarantee us victory," said Sid Dinerstein, who chairs the Republican party of Palm Beach county.
Bush got about 70 percent of the 120,000-strong Arab-American community's ballots in 2000 but is unlikely to come close to that total this time around.
Democrats on the other hand are confident they will get a strong majority of the votes cast by blacks, who make up about 15 percent of Florida's 17 million population.
A crucial question though is whether Kerry will be able to get the strong African-American turnout analysts say he needs to win Florida.
Votes cast by blacks made up a disproportionately high percentage of those discarded in the 2000 "Florida fiasco" and it remains unclear whether this will motivate them to go to the polls on November 2 or convince them it's not worth the effort.
10/24/2004 10:07 GMT - AFP