PPP's tracking of the Florida Republican primary wraps up with Mitt Romney at 39%, Newt Gingrich at 31%, Rick Santorum at 15%, and Ron Paul at 11%. Our three days of tracking found very little movement in the race: Romney was at 39-40% every day, Gingrich was at 31-32% every day, Santorum was at 14-15% every day, and Paul was at 9-11% every day. 
 
 The lack of movement in the final 72 hours of the campaign is a far cry from the dramatic shifts Florida Republicans made in their preferences over the last four months. In late September we found Mitt Romney ahead of Newt Gingrich by 20 points in the state. By late November, as he surged nationally, Gingrich had taken a 30 point led over Romney. But then our first poll in early January, after poor performances by Gingrich in Iowa and New Hampshire, found Romney back on top by 15 points. Riding a (short lived) wave of momentum off his South Carolina victory, Gingrich led our Florida poll last week by 5 points. By the end of the week the race had swung back to Romney and over the last three days his lead has been steady in the 7-8 point range. 
 
 One thing Romney did a great job of was getting his voters out early. With the third of the electorate who have already cast their ballots he leads 45-32. That means Gingrich would have to win election day voters by somewhere in the 6-8 point range to pull off the Florida upset, but we find that Romney still has a 36-30 advantage with those are waiting to vote tomorrow. 
 
 Romney will win in Florida tomorrow because he's winning his core groups of support by wide margins, while holding Gingrich to single digit advantages with his key constituencies. Romney is winning moderates by 39 (53-14), seniors by 12 (46-32), and women by 12 (42-30). Meanwhile Gingrich is only up 8 with Tea Partiers (39-31) and 6 with Evangelicals (38-32), groups he won by huge margins in South Carolina. ||||| Voters in Tuesday's Florida Republican primary chose Mitt Romney as the candidate best able to beat President Barack Obama in the fall, preferring electability over ideology in lifting the former Massachusetts governor to a broad victory despite concerns that his issue positions are not conservative enough. 
 
 ROMNEY RECAPTURES ELECTABILTY: A majority of Florida GOP voters said Romney is the candidate best able to beat Obama in a general election matchup; only about 3 in 10 said the same of Newt Gingrich. And Romney carried 6 in 10 votes among those seeking a candidate who could defeat the president in November. Gingrich had a strong showing among those seeking a true conservative and split the vote with Romney among those seeking an experienced candidate. 
 
 CONSERVATIVES THEN AND NOW: In 2008, Romney carried the mantle of conservative alternative to eventual Republican nominee John McCain. This time around, about 4 in 10 Florida voters said Romney's issue positions are not conservative enough, and very conservative voters were more apt to back Gingrich than the former governor of Massachusetts. Strong supporters of the tea party movement also favored Gingrich over Romney, but Romney carried 50 percent or more among those who support the movement somewhat, are neutral or oppose it. 
 
 THE GENDER GAP: Romney won by a wide margin among women after a deeply negative campaign in Florida raising questions about Gingrich's character. Women were more apt than men to say they were influenced by campaign advertising, and were a bit more likely to say a candidate's "strong moral character" was the most important factor in their vote. In the end, only about half of women in the poll report holding a positive opinion of Gingrich as a person, compared with nearly 8 in 10 who have a positive opinion of Romney. 
 
 ECONOMIC CONCERNS TRUMP ALL: About 6 in 10 said the economy was their top issue in choosing a candidate, about half said foreclosures were having a major impact on their community, and 3 in 10 said they were falling behind financially. 
 
 SEEKING OTHER CHOICES: Four in 10 voters said they would like to see someone else run for the nomination, more than said so in New Hampshire a few weeks ago, though the window for another candidate to join the field is nearly closed. About half of voters said they would be satisfied if Gingrich or Rick Santorum became the nominee. More, about two-thirds, said they'd be satisfied with a Romney candidacy, including about 4 in 10 who voted for Gingrich and half who backed Santorum. 
 
 The survey of 2,739 Republican voters was conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks by Edison Research. This includes preliminary results among 2,139 voters interviewed Tuesday as they left their polling places at 40 randomly selected sites in Florida. In addition, 600 who voted early or absentee were interviewed by landline or cellular telephone from Jan. 23 to 29. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. ||||| TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney claimed a powerful victory in Florida’s presidential primary, reasserting himself as the front-runner for his party’s nomination and leaving Newt Gingrich reeling from a likely double-digit defeat and facing an uncertain path to regaining his post-South Carolina momentum. 
 
 With 96 percent of precincts reporting, Romney led Gingrich by 16 percentage points, 47 percent to 32 percent. Rick Santorum was a distant third, with 13 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 7 percent. 
 
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 reset Winners & Losers in 60 seconds Romney wins in Florida Gingrich after 2nd place finish 
 
 In just 10 days, Romney went from limping out of South Carolina — where Gingrich beat him handily — to scoring an almost across-the-board win against the former House speaker with nearly every category of GOP primary voter. 
 
 Addressing an energetic crowd of supporters here in Tampa, Romney acknowledged that the primary campaign was not over but predicted the GOP was on its way to victory in the fall. 
 
 “A competitive primary does not divide us. It prepares us. And we will win,” Romney said. “When we gather back here in Tampa seven months from now for our convention, ours will be a united party with a winning ticket for America.” 
 
 Said Romney: “I stand ready to lead this party and to lead our nation.” 
 
 Romney’s final victory margin may tighten as returns come in from Florida’s conservative western Panhandle. But with a majority of votes reported, Romney appeared on the brink of an important symbolic accomplishment: winning more votes than Gingrich and Santorum — the two would-be anti-Romney conservatives — combined. 
 
 That won’t put to rest questions about Romney’s ability to connect with and fire up the activist base of the Republican Party. It may, however, deprive his beleaguered opponents of a key argument they’ve used to explain their persistence in the race. 
 
 Romney won with both men and women and in every age and income group, according to network exit polls. He won a majority of white voters — 53 percent — and 44 percent of Latinos. 
 
 The only conspicuous bright spot for Gingrich was voters who described themselves as “very conservative,” who made up 33 percent of the electorate and broke for Gingrich over Romney, 43 percent to 29 percent. 
 
 In his own evening speech in Orlando, Gingrich insisted that Florida had only helped to reinforce the overarching narrative of the campaign. 
 
 “It is now clear that this will be a two-person race between the conservative leader, Newt Gingrich, and the Massachusetts moderate,” Gingrich said. “The voters of Florida really made that clear.” 
 
 With supporters waving signs that read, “46 States to Go,” Gingrich vowed: “We are going to contest every place and we are going to win and we will be in Tampa as the nominee in August.” 
 
 Gingrich will be hard-pressed to keep up with Romney, financially and organizationally — a dynamic already in play in Florida. 
 
 The dramatic scale of Romney’s win is in some respects a tale of traditional campaign legwork and preparation paying off. The Bay Stater raised money faster and earlier, built an operation in Florida sooner, and worked aggressively to exploit the state’s early and absentee voting laws. ||||| TAMPA, Fla. — After a 10-day, post-South Carolina slog characterized by relentless attacks on Newt Gingrich from Mitt Romney’s forces, Florida on Tuesday will vote in its 2012 Republican presidential primary. 
 
 With Romney and his associated super PAC outspending the Gingrich teams by a nearly 5-to-1 margin and blanketing the state’s airwaves with negative TV ads, Gingrich never found his footing here, careening from one message to another without gaining traction. 
 
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 reset Adam Smith: 5 counties to watch Important issues to Fla. voters 
 
 Here are POLITICO’s five things to watch from Florida as the polls close, at 7 p.m. local time in both the Eastern and Central Time Zones: 
 
 1) Mitt’s margin 
 
 Gingrich needs a close race more than Romney needs a blowout victory. 
 
 For the former House speaker, finishing a respectable second means he can explain away a loss by arguing that he was outspent and out-organized by a superior Romney organization that was already in place and had a 2008 run under its belt. 
 
 If Romney wins by a lot — say, 12 percentage points or more — it’s likely to negate Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina, making that win about as useful a yardstick as Rick Santorum’s Iowa caucuses triumph. And without any more scheduled debates until Feb. 22 in Arizona — an event that Romney has not committed to attending — Gingrich will be more reliant than ever on super PAC money to get him to Super Tuesday. 
 
 All the available polling evidence suggests a comfortable Romney victory, the size of which will have a bearing on perceptions of Gingrich’s durability. 
 
 A Romney campaign adviser said Monday that Romney’s goal in Florida remains a 6-to-8-percentage-point spread — which tracks exactly with the final Public Policy Polling difference in the state — with a double-digit victory being “more than we had ever expected.” 
 
 At his campaign’s final event Monday at The Villages, Romney paid Gingrich the ultimate insult: After a day of wicked Gingrich attacks, Romney ignored him altogether. 
 
 2) Newt and women 
 
 The Romney campaign’s last hope in South Carolina was a big margin over Gingrich among women, but that turned out to be wishful thinking: Gingrich swept to victory across almost all significant demographic categories. 
 
 Gingrich skillfully shut down the issue of his ex-wife Marianne’s grievances during the CNN debate in Charleston, but the story may play differently among a Florida GOP electorate that is larger and more diverse than South Carolina’s. 
 
 The good news for Gingrich is the story of his two divorces and his second wife’s allegations that he demanded an “open marriage” didn’t come up in the Florida debates or campaign. 
 
 But even though the Romney campaign has stayed away from the divorce story, Romney and his campaign haven’t been subtle about highlighting the Romney family. 
 
 Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, in particular, has been an aggressive surrogate for Romney in pushing his pristine family story — she hasn’t needed to overtly contrast it it with the Gingrich history to make her point. 
 
 Even Romney’s wife, Ann, who typically offers relatively apolitical but loving introductions of her husband, opened his first event in the state in Ormond Beach last weekend with a reminder of their family life. 
 
 “I want to remind you where we know our riches are,” she said. “Our riches are with our families. It is the American way, and I am proud of my husband and I am proud of all the accomplishments he’s made in his life.”
– The big news organizations couldn't call this one fast enough. The moment the last of the Florida polls closed at 8pm, AP, CNN, and all the usual suspects declared Mitt Romney the winner. It wasn't tough: With all precincts reporting, Romney had 46.4%, Newt Gingrich 31.9%, Rick Santorum 13.4%, and Ron Paul 7%. In their respective speeches, Gingrich made clear that he is in the race for the long run, while Romney put all his focus on President Obama. Click for that. Some exit poll highlights: Electability: 45% said it was the most important attribute in a candidate, a good sign for Romney. Conservatives: Voters who called themselves "very conservative" went for Gingrich 43-29, one of Newt's few bright spots, notes Politico. Anyone else? About 4 in 10 said they would like another candidate in the race. Women: Romney won among female voters 51-29, reports the Daily Caller. Economy: 30% said they were falling behind financially, and half said foreclosures were a big problem in their communities, notes AP. Negative ads: 37% said Romney ran the most unfair campaign, while 34% pinned it on Gingrich. Demographics: About 1 in 7 voters were Hispanic, and 4 in 10 were over age 65.