Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama made final, in-person pleas to Florida voters Monday on the last day of the longest presidential campaign in history, as polls showed the nominees deadlocked in the nation's largest battleground state.

Playing offense in Republican-leaning Jacksonville, Obama sought to stick it to McCain in the same arena where the GOP nominee made a blunder about the economy six weeks ago.

''John McCain just doesn't get it,'' Obama told about 9,000 people at Veterans Memorial Arena. 'Remember what he said when he was here in Jacksonville on Sept. 15? . . . `The fundamentals of our economy are strong.' ''

The crowd let out a loud boo.

''You don't need to boo. You just need to vote,'' said Obama, who pointed out that on the day of McCain's speech in Jacksonville, Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers went bust and thousands of jobs were lost.

In Tampa Bay, home to a deep reservoir of swing voters, McCain bashed Obama as a tax-and-spender and suggested his opponent would prematurely withdraw from Iraq without honor. The tax attack was the biggest applause winner, eliciting the crowd at Raymond James Stadium to chant, ``No-Bama! No-Bama!''

''Nothing is inevitable here!'' said McCain, who headlined a raucous, post-midnight rally in Coral Gables hours earlier. ``We never give up, we never quit!''

But the crowd numbered fewer than a thousand. On the final day before the 2004 election, President Bush drew more than 10,000 supporters to a rally at the New York Yankees' spring-training complex next door to McCain's Tampa event.

Democrats head into Election Day with a cushion of votes, a reversal from 2004 when the GOP dominated early voting. This year, Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by 358,280 in votes cast early at the polls or by mail.

THE ECONOMY

Florida voters are overwhelmingly focused on the economy in a state plagued by unemployment and foreclosures. Obama said his tax-cut plan for families would help 95 percent of all American taxpayers, including ''99.9 of all plumbers.'' That was a reference to his encounter with an Ohio plumber whose suggestion that Obama had a ''socialist'' tax policy became McCain's rallying cry.

Until McCain began invoking ''Joe the Plumber'' in the final debate two weeks ago, his poll numbers were dropping in Florida along with the financial markets, though his full remarks in Jacksonville included: ``These are very, very difficult times. I promise you we will never put America in this position again.''

McCain hasn't returned to Jacksonville since then, while Obama has made two trips to North Florida's most-populous county during that time.

Democrats lead the GOP by nine percentage points in voter registration there, though the county frequently votes Republican. In 2004, Bush won 61,580 more votes here than Democrat John Kerry, posting his biggest victory margin in the state.

One reason for Bush's success: Up to 70,000 black voters didn't show up on Election Day. Overwhelmingly Democratic, black voters account for 27 percent of the total Duval County vote. So far, about 43 percent of Duval's voters have cast absentee or early ballots.

OOPS

Obama made a small gaffe of his own in his 30-minute speech Monday when he departed from his script to bash McCain for running negative television ads ''here in Ohio.'' The crowd quickly let him know he was in a different battleground state.

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