In the past month, Obama has gained marginal support in Southeast Florida, Southwest Florida and Tampa Bay — the ultimate battleground region of the battleground state.

Where North Florida and Southwest Florida are strongest for Romney, liberal Southeast Florida is Obama’s base. It’s the only place he’s leading the Republican — by 14 points.

Obama has spent more time in Ohio than Florida in the waning days of the campaign. It’s a nod to the fact that Ohio is more winnable for Obama, who wants to stay competitive in Florida.

If Romney loses either state, he probably can’t win the White House.

One of Obama’s last pre-Election Day visits to Florida comes Sunday in the most-Democratic of South Florida counties: Broward, where Democrats have run up an 82,000 lead in in-person early votes.

Democrats point to the big early-vote turnout and close absentee-ballot numbers as evidence of an effective “ground game” by Obama.

But Republicans have pointed out that the daily number of Democrats casting in-person early-vote ballots is about the same or lower than in 2008, and Obama won’t head into Election Day with a huge advantage in early ballots cast as he did four years ago.

A big reason for that: the Republican-led Legislature cut early voting days from 14 to eight and the cumulative number of early voting hours in South Florida is being cut by a total of 24 hours compared to 2008.

Democrat Sharon Armuelles, a retired lawyer from Miramar, said she was concerned with the “voter intimidation and voter suppression” by the GOP and made sure to cast her ballot early for Obama.

She gave Obama high marks for how he handled Superstorm Sandy’s aftermath in the Northeast, where he received praise from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Romney surrogate.

“It was amazing because I was watching President Obama with Gov. Christie and it occurred to me that what we were looking at was … cooperation,” she said. “That’s the profile of where we need to go. I’m hoping after this election, that people start realizing that … that you have to work out compromises.”

Romney has spoken about the need for comprise on the campaign trail, which the Obama camp has criticized as false.

But Coker notes that what’s crucial in a campaign is the overall sense of the message perceived by the electorate at large.

“Romney’s painting the bigger picture, the broader long-term — as Bush used to call it, ‘the vision thing,’ ” Coker said.

“Whereas Obama’s basically down here just preaching to the choir and trying to get them excited.”