Scroll down to watch live video from Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich's Florida campaign headquarters as they await the votes to be tallied.
TAMPA, Florida - Florida Republicans were voting today after a 10-day presidential primary campaign of expensive, negative TV attacks that saw Mitt Romney grow more aggressive and confident while rival Newt Gingrich vowed to continue his bid all the way to the national convention in August.
Polls suggested Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist, was well-positioned for a comeback after losing to Gingrich in the previous primary round in South Carolina. Both he and Gingrich, the former House speaker, made final appeals for votes while two other candidates, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, were looking ahead to upcoming contests with campaign appearances in Colorado.
After 10 days of relentless attacks on Gingrich's ability to lead, Romney leads Gingrich by an average of 13 percentage points in Florida, according to the most recent polls compiled by the website Real Clear Politics.
About half of Florida primary voters said the most important factor for them was backing a candidate who can defeat Obama in November, according to early exit poll results . In a state with unemployment at 10%, voters overhelmingly listed the economy as their top issue, and many pointed to housing foreclosures as a major problem.
At stake are 50 delegates to the Republican National Convention and a big leg up in momentum heading into February caucuses and primaries.
GOP officials in Florida were anticipating a big turnout Tuesday, more than 2 million voters, up from a record 1.9 million in the 2008 Republican primary. More than 605,000 Floridians voted earlier, either by visiting early-voting stations or by mailing absentee ballots - more than the early vote in the GOP primary four years ago.
Without predicting a winner or endorsing a candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told CNN, "The winner of Florida is in all likelihood going to be the nominee of our party."
Romney's campaign canceled a Tuesday morning rally but scheduled a night celebration at the Tampa Convention Center. Gingrich was making a series of public appearances before gathering with supporters for a party in Orlando.
The last polls close at 8 p.m. ET in the Florida Panhandle; the rest of the state closes at 7 p.m.
TV ads in Florida were heavily skewed in Romney's favor. Restore our Future, an outside group supporting Romney, accounted for about $8.8 million in the ad wars, and the candidate and the "super PAC" combined outspent Gingrich and Winning The Future, the organization backing him, by about $15.5 million to $3.3 million, an advantage of nearly 5-1.
In Lake County early Tuesday, Sam Chesser, 78, a retired jeweler, declined to say whom he voted for but said the negative ads almost caused him to stay home.
"It is the same as it has been for the last few years, it's just nasty, nasty," he said. "I was tempted to stay away this morning."
Still, Chesser said, he made the trip, anyway. "If I don't vote, I don't have a right to gripe," he said.
In Palm Beach, Julian Stoopler, a 68-year-old investment adviser, said Tuesday he always has liked Gingrich but ultimately decided to give his vote to former business leader Romney. "The condition of the country has deteriorated so badly that we need a CEO to turn it around," Stoopler said.
In Miami's Little Havana, car salesman Osvaldo Mitat, 69, favored Gingrich. He's impressed by the former House speaker's "commitment to the Cuban community," Mitat said, and Gingrich's past personal life doesn't bother him - Mitat has been divorced four times himself.
"Romney also has a past," he said. "Everyone has a past."
At a voting precinct in North Naples, Conrad Reinhard, 71, said he voted for Mitt Romney.
"I like Gingrich and his energy, but Romney is more stable, more level-headed," Reinhard said.
Romney's stability is also why they chose him over Gingrich, said Ginny Jones, 68, and her husband, Norm Jones, 73.
"Newt is a renegade. He's just not liked. It's his attitude. He's so cocky," Ginny Jones said.
Reciting the words to America the Beautiful has long been a part of Romney's stump speech, but ending the final full day of campaigning at The Villages on Monday, he felt so good that he sang instead.
Under the banner "Florida is Romney country" draped across a picturesque yellow shop in The Villages, Romney led the crowd in song.
Gone were the references to Gingrich that began his speech just a few hours earlier in Jacksonville. There, Romney welcomed several hundred people to his morning rally inside a chilly warehouse and told them Gingrich "didn't like" the two Florida debates.
"He said in the first debate he didn't do well because the crowd was too quiet," Romney said. "He said he didn't do well (in the second) because the crowd was too loud."
Those were just excuses, Romney said. Instead, Gingrich was fizzling in Florida because "people actually saw him in those debates, listened to his background and experience. They learned, for instance, that he was paid $1.6 million to be a lobbyist for Freddie Mac and they said, 'That's not what we want in the White House.' "
Romney's demeanor comes at the end of a week where the ads have gotten nastier, the rhetoric hotter and the lead in the polls has changed hands. One thing remained constant: It was a two-man race for Florida's delegates between Gingrich and Romney.
The two other remaining GOP candidates left the state days ago. Paul, the congressman from Texas, left for Maine on Friday. Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, left over the weekend after his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, was hospitalized. Instead of returning to Florida, he visited Nevada and the battlegrounds of Missouri and Colorado.
Gingrich campaigned Monday in Tampa flanked by former candidate Herman Cain and radio talk show host Michael Reagan, son of former president Ronald Reagan. Gingrich called Romney's attacks "dishonest" and told reporters not to count him out.
At the start of the Florida campaign nine days ago, Gingrich had a 5-percentage-point lead over Romney; now, he's trailing in most polls by at least 10 points.
"I'll tell you what, there's nothing like 17-and-a-half-million dollars of false ads to make a big difference," Gingrich told reporters. "The reason that I seemed flat on the second debate in Florida is I've never seen a candidate for president that methodically dishonest. ... That's why I was quiet, because there was no simple way to call him out (on what were) a series of falsehoods."
The back-and-forth has proved tiresome to some voters, who worry they will provide fodder for President Obama in the general election. Ken Hess, 44, a business owner and Gingrich supporter from Tarpon Springs, said a truce would be difficult to manage this far into the contest.
"I think it's at the point there's too much bad blood and they can't stop, because if one stops the other will be like, 'Oh, here's my opening,' " Hess said. "If they can't handle this, wait until the Obama (campaign) opens up."
Laurence Railey, 31, said he was undecided but was leaning heavily toward Gingrich.
"Newt's got to say, 'If Romney's going to attack me, I'm just going to attack him back,' " said Railey, a Web developer from Tampa. "But he's a much stronger candidate than Romney."
Vicki Schneider, 68, a Romney supporter and retired teacher from The Villages, said she liked the fact Romney was Mormon and that he had clear "values" and "integrity."
She said the ads didn't change her opinion of Romney, but said Gingrich's reaction to them cast him in a poor light.
"The things he says," Schneider said. "It's just bad."
At Romney's rally Monday evening at The Villages, resident Ann Zarnoth, 72, who worked for a printing company before she retired, said she was a Gingrich supporter but has since changed her mind.
"He has too much baggage," she said. "I just feel like Romney's more electable."
Live Video:
Click here if the above player does not work
Click here if the above player does not work
More Florida Primary Coverage:
Jackie Kucinich, USA TODAY