US: "Where exactly is the president speaking tonight?" an elderly Cuban-American asks me in Miami's Little Havana. He is referring to the first debate between George Bush and John Kerry held in nearby Coral Gables yesterday evening, but to him all that matters is that the President is in town.
Florida's nearly one million Cubans mostly love George Bush because he talks tough on Fidel Castro and because of his brother Jeb, the Governor, who has a Hispanic wife. Some 80 per cent of Cuban-Americans today support the president's re-election and they could decide the outcome on November 2nd as they did four years ago.
The debate has focused international attention on the state which officially gave Mr Bush the presidency by a mere 537 votes.
Florida is the fourth-largest US state after California, New York and Texas. With its mixed ethnic population and large number of women and elderly, it is a mirror image of the country as a whole. It is "ground zero" for the 2004 election, according to Mr Karl Rove, Mr Bush's political strategist.
Currently Mr Bush is up by 6 per cent in the state. His numbers have however been helped by local events. Mr Kerry was 4-6 per cent ahead in July but was overtaken by the President in August. Then came the hurricanes. The ill winds blew in Mr Bush's favour. Campaigning in the state was suspended.
While the four devastating storms kept Mr Kerry out, "Bush could come in and hand out the aid", says Mr Dario Moreno, an authority on voting in Florida.
He recalls that when Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Florida on the eve of the 1992 election, the Miami Herald ran a headline, "Where's the Cavalry?" over a story about how slow President George Bush snr was to react. It damaged him in the polls.
This time after Charley hit Florida on a Friday, the federal emergency crews were on the ground by Sunday. Polls show that people are 80 per cent happy with the response. The hurricanes also meant that for several weeks no one paid much attention to presidential politics, so that opinions formed in August were frozen.
"I had to put shutters up twice and when you're doing that you're not thinking about presidential politics," says Mr Moreno, director of the Metropolitan Centre in Miami which conducts research for the state's politicians and decision-makers. "It doesn't mean things can't change. The state is still volatile. If Kerry says something clever tonight, that could shake it up."
Last night's debate was possibly the Democratic challenger's final chance to turn the tide in Florida and nationwide. "Kerry made a mistake concentrating on Iraq and Vietnam and not on domestic issues," says Mr Moreno, "and the Kerry campaign did not use John Edwards very effectively."
Voters in Florida put healthcare and jobs before security, but Mr Edwards, he points out, is being used to attack the President on Iraq instead of pushing domestic issues.
Another factor working in the Republicans' favour in Florida is the 6 per cent Jewish vote which largely supports Mr Bush over his pro-Israeli stance.
In the growing Hispanic community, which forms 11 per cent of the electorate, not all voters are pro-Bush. A hit salsa tune on Spanish language stations, about US coastguards turning back a Chevrolet converted into a boat for refugees, contains the line, "George Bush has become a rat".
But Mr Kerry does not have a personal or a political connection to help him take advantage. Mr Gore spoke fluent Spanish, but that didn't stop Cuban-Americans giving 250,000 more votes to Mr Bush than to the former Vice President. Mrs Teresa Heinz Kerry speaks Spanish but has not been to Miami.
Cuban-Americans still feel angry with the last Democratic president for the enforced return to Fidel Castro of the schoolboy Elio Gonzales, whose mother died as they fled Cuba for Miami. President Clinton's attorney general, Ms Janet Reno, who enforced the decision, used to be popular in her native Miami. Now, says Mr Moreno, "she is so disliked she cannot endorse any candidate. It would be the kiss of death."