But an Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion poll out Monday showed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) moving up into second place, with 17 percent, behind Giuliani, with 26 percent. Romney slipped to fourth, with 12 percent.

Romney and other candidates — former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Huckabee — will attempt to chip away at Giuliani’s big lead in statewide polls when they gather Wednesday to debate in St. Petersburg, part of Florida’s largest media market.

Nearly a quarter of all the state’s registered voters live in the Tampa media market, according to Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. St. Petersburg and Tampa also lie at one end of the I-4 corridor.

Candidates consider the corridor, named after the section of highway connecting those cities to Orlando, an unpredictable battleground.

“Central Florida is a total swing area and no candidate has [it] wrapped up,” said Rep. Ric Keller (R), a lawmaker representing Orlando who backs McCain.

Romney has aired television ads for months in the Tampa and Orlando markets, which combined reach more than 40 percent of the electorate. Giuliani has stayed off TV.

For days, local news organizations have promoted Wednesday’s debate. “We talked about it three times today and we’re a hundred miles away,” Mike Synan, political director of WDBO, an Orlando news station, said Monday.