Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was in a triumphant mood as voters flocked to the polls today to choose the party candidate to take on Barack Obama in November.
An estimated two million registered Republicans are expected to cast their ballots. Election officers reported a good early turn-out.
Polls show Romney with a double-digit lead over his main rival, Newt Gingrich, who has been left reeling by one of the most expensive and sustained negative ad campaigns in recent US history.
About 630,000 had already cast their ballots before today, taking advantage of early voting. This appears to have left Romney with a built-in advantage. Romney, with a campaign team in place in Florida since September, had been working to get supporters to cast their ballots early.
Gingrich had no such organisation in place and estimates of the 630,000 votes cast suggest he is already behind by about 60,000.
The former speaker of the House, needing to make up the gap, has five campaign events scheduled for today while Romney, in a sign of confidence, has none, having cancelled his sole event scheduled for Tampa.
Speaking at a campaign event in central Florida on Monday, Romney broke one of the cardinal rules of candidates anywhere in the world by coming close to predicting victory. "With a turnout like this, I'm beginning to feel like we might win tomorrow. What do you think?" he asked.
"Speaker Gingrich. He's not feeling very excited these days. I know, it's sad. He's been flailing around a bit trying to go after me for one thing or another. You just watch it and you shake your head. It's been kind of painfully revealing to watch."
Later in the day, at his final rally of the Florida campaign, speaking to a crowd of about 1,000 in the Villages, Romney made no mention at all of Gingrich, and concentrated exclusively on Barack Obama.
In a sign of his desperation to minimise the scale of the defeat, Gingrich reached out to various groupings in Florida: Jews, Catholics and Cuban-Americans. In a new line of attack aimed at Jewish voters, he claimed Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, had ended kosher food for the elderly as part of a cut in state spending.
"He eliminated serving kosher food for elderly Jewish residents under Medicare," Gingrich said. Romney's campaign team admitted kosher food had been cut but was later restored.
Romney has returned to assuming the mantle of the Republican nominee, behaving as if it is already won, rehearsing for battle with Obama for the White House in November. Over the last few weeks, under pressure in South Carolina and fearful of an upset in Florida, he had been using campaign stops to attack Gingrich.
But he can begin to relax. If he wins Florida comfortably, he is in line to pick up about five of the next six contests in February.
Matthew Corrigan, professor of politics at the University of North Florida, said the significance of tonight's result lies in how much Romney wins by. If Gingrich can narrow Romney's lead, it will help him to maintain some momentum for the following contests. "If Gingrich loses by less than double-digits, Romney will be disappointed."
Corrigan sees Romney's ad blitz as having a major impact. "It has been a tough hit job," he said.
Romney had been spending on ads in Florida for a month while Gingrich came in only in the last week.
Gingrich, who won South Carolina, is already preparing the ground for a defeat in Florida, blaming Romney's huge negative ad spend. He claimed Romney had spent $17m in the state on negative campaigning, almost double most estimates.
Gingrich even went so far in his retaliation as to create ads that suggest Romney is not a conservative, a proposition that Corrigan called "pretty ridiculous".
