Hillary Clinton’s battle for Florida being fought by army of volunteers from across America – and the world

Florida, with 29 Electoral College votes, is where volunteers are needed the most

In the final weekend of the most tumultuous presidential election in generations, the Hillary Clinton campaign is working flat out to boost voter participation in Florida gambling that victory in the state on Tuesday will stymie any path Donald Trump may have to the White House.

Nowhere is the effort more intense than in the Democrat bastions of Miami-Dade and Broward counties in southeastern Florida where maximum turnout is vital to offset the heavy advantage the Republican nominee is sure to see in more conservative northern parts of the state.

Anxiety levels are high at the Clinton campaign’s cavernous Miami headquarters in the hip and buzzing Wynwood design district, with polling showing that once again Florida is on a knife-edge with the latest RealClearPolitics poll giving Ms Clinton the merest edge of just 1.2 per cent.

But it is at this and other Clinton outposts in Florida where what is possibly the campaign’s biggest asset is on display – the sheer scale and sophistication of its ground-game compared to Mr Trump’s far more meager operation.

“Florida is always going to be a very close state, it is always going to be within the one percent margin,” Juan Cuba, executive director of Miami-Dade Democratic Party, told The Independent. “We need to win Miami-Dade big to offset losses that will happen in North Florida. We are fighting for every single vote.”

But he evinces guarded optimism that the Wynwood “get-out-the-vote” drive will make the crucial difference.

“Our ground team is much much larger than what the Republicans have and all of that builds up to election day. I am very confident in our ability to turn out voters.”

Deployed between now and Tuesday across both these counties will be a veritable army of volunteers knocking on doors, many here from other parts of the country and even the world.

“This is a very, very crucial battle ground area,” Alice Grierson, 21, a University of Edinburgh student volunteering at the Wynwood nerve-centre, said. While she recognised Mr Trump’s power to pull votes, she is hopeful for Ms Clinton. “Really, everything is being done to ensure victory in Florida, which hopefully will lead to victory across the country.”

Beth Gray, 21, from the University of Birmingham, is also throwing herself into the race for Clinton, making phone calls and canvassing on the streets of Miami. Inevitably, some of the voters she meets express surprise that she is doing it even if this isn't her election. She too expressed the belief that Ms Clinton would pull it out in Florida when the moment comes.

“We have experienced Brexit,” she conceded, “so we can see the risks that are out there in terms of the Trump campaign, but I think being here in this office, it gives you an idea of the fact of how well Hillary Clinton is doing. As you talk to voters there is a sense that she will win.”

Joanne Goodwin, the volunteer director at the Pompano Beach Clinton HQ in Broward County north of Miami, expressed near-wonderment at the numbers of volunteers coming from distant parts to south Florida in the knowledge that the outcome of the entire election could be determined by the state as it was in 2000 in George W Bush won it by just 537 votes thus securing the White House.

This week a group of 21 Danish citizens anxious to help out showed up at her office, which is squeezed into a vacant space in a nondescript strip of shops. She has also had volunteers showing up in recent days from California, Texas, Washington DC and New York. Ms Goodwin, who signed up to help Ms Clinton the day she declared last year, struggled to articulate what a Trump victory would mean to her.

“I cannot tell you how I would react,” she offered. “It’s like asking somebody how they are going to react to a tragedy that hasn’t happened. You don’t know.”

“Cataclysmic,” was the adjective that Maggie Osdoby Katz reached for when asked the same question. A veteran of both Obama campaigns, she left her home in Tiblisi, Georgia, this week just so she could join old friends in South Florida helping to make the final push for Ms Clinton.

“I flew all this way to help turn Florida blue,” Ms Osdoby Katz, a Jewish American, explained, saying her priority is to chivvy Hispanics, who now make up 16 per cent of Florida’s population.

Hispanics may now constitute the most crucial element of Ms Clinton’s coalition in Florida. Early voting data suggests that she has already reached the same 60 per cent mark of support among Florida Hispanics that Mr Obama achieved four years ago. She may need to push that even higher amid signs that turnout among African Americans has slipped compared to 2012.

Early voting in Florida began ten days ago and ends on Sunday, a day on which African-American participation should jump significantly, says Ms Goowin, because of so-called “Souls to Polls” programmes involving transporting black congregations to early polling stations after church. “It’s a notorious day for African Americans to vote,” she noted.

What the folks in Wynwood have not yet done is make arrangements for any kind of victory party on Tuesday night should their candidate win, “because we are flat out trying to win this thing”, as one campaign official here put it.

It’s a battle to the end that is fraying a few nerves as election day finally comes into view. “I can’t wait,” Ms Grierson noted. “I just think I will be so nervous, I will be so stressed on that day. All I can say is I wish I could vote.”