The two campaigns visited Florida last weekend. Above, Sen. Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, at the University of Florida; photo from Barack Obama on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons. Below, Gov. Sarah Palin with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in Polk City; photo by lakelandlocal2 on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

North by Northwestern photo editor Sarah Collins flew to Gainseville, Fla. for a concert last weekend, with a layover on Friday in Charlotte, North Carolina. In her down-time, she talked to voters in the two swing-states, and then sent her impressions back to us.

The motorcade blares down University Avenue, police flanking buses and vans full of haggard advisers, journalists and Joe Biden. The last stretch runs through Gainesville, Florida. One more push to swing the state blue.

The candidates are everywhere here. Sen. Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin speak at competing events on different sides of party lines but within one state’s borders. T-shirts of Sarah Palin taking aim with a rifle share space with posters of Barack Obama that simply say “hope.” A van with “NOBAMA” scrawled on the side is parked around the corner from a Smart Car covered in Obama posters. They don’t call it a battleground state for nothing.

Floridians and North Carolinians, on the weekend before the election, are sure of only one thing: that come Tuesday, they will play a pivotal role in deciding who will be the next President of the United States of America. People can hardly speak of anything else. In everything they do there’s an allusion to the weight hanging over their state, a tension. For them, pushing through Tuesday will be like ripping off a band-aid.

The atmosphere is especially charged for young voters, who may have only voted a few times before, if at all. Their sense of importance in this election has been underscored by the media that constantly polls them and the campaigns that constantly try to court them.

Brentley Broomer, a 21 year-old US Airways employee and North Carolina resident, spoke of the ubiquity of the election and Barack Obama, saying, “We voted between Hillary Clinton and Obama, and everybody from North Carolina picked Obama. I feel as though that’s all anybody’s heard about. And being a new voter between 18 and 21… that’s all they’ve heard about.” Broomer recognized the unique position of North Carolina in deciding the election but tried to deflect, saying, “North Carolina is a big vote, but the way I’ve understood it, Ohio is even a bigger vote.”

No one wants that kind of pressure.

Shavon, who declined to provide her last name, is a first-time voter. She talked about her fears with the kind of excited hope that’s been seen in Obama supporters across the country. The 20 year-old North Carolinian stood in line for six hours to vote early on Wednesday, all the while worrying that she would be shot by racists attempting to stop African-Americans from voting in the deeply divided state, she said.

I asked Shavon why she would wait in line for almost an entire workday while considering that she might be killed. She didn’t pause a second before looking me in the eye and saying, “Obama.”

There’s a history of racial violence in North Carolina that’s fuel for Shavon’s fears. The state, traditionally a Republican stronghold, was one of the surprise swing states that emerged in the campaign season. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2006 North Carolina had an African-American population of more than 21 percent.

And though only 60 percent of African-Americans nationwide voted in the 2004 election according to the Bureau, many analysts are expecting that number to increase with an African-American as a viable candidate.

Bryan Peeler, a 29 year-old US Airways employee, saw this trend in early voting — a trend that has been reported by news outlets across the country. “The majority of people that were at the [polling place] I was at, it was predominately black. They had a few whites there, but it was predominately black. I was amazed, really, to see how many [African-Americans] were coming out.”

When Peeler and his fellow employees talk about the upcoming election, race and geography permeate the conversation. Swing states like North Carolina resemble the country in microcosm: red or blue communities instead of red or blue states, still divided, but coexisting.

Shavon spoke of how visible the dividing lines are throughout Charlotte, saying, “I went to a neighborhood, I see more McCain signs than I see Obama. I could go to another neighborhood, I’d see more Obama signs than McCain. It just depends on what side of town you live on.”

For Jerome Prite, a 29-year-old US Airways employee, Barack Obama’s candidacy has made him question some of his assumptions about white North Carolinians. “I was very surprised to see more white people in line, and a lot of them were saying they’re voting for Obama,” Prite said.

The excitement about Obama is also visible on the streets of Gainesville, home to the University of Florida. While McCain-Palin signs are definitely sprinkled around the town, you get the sense that Obama’s the favorite among college students here. A convenience store sells shirts with Obama’s picture next to Martin Luther King Junior’s face, with the first line of the “I have a dream…” speech printed at the top. A trendy boutique a few blocks away has a shirt of John F. Kennedy’s face super-imposed over Barack Obama’s face. Young men and women walk up and down the streets handing out fliers imploring passersby to vote Obama into office on Tuesday.

People everywhere are hanging their hopes on the man. For young voters that grew up during the eight years of the Bush administration, the thought of change and choice is tantalizing.

Peeler sees the same hope in North Carolina, and in himself.

“I think that’s what deterred a lot of people from voting too, they didn’t feel like they were voting for anything. Like, why vote, it ain’t going to help me none?” Then his mouth sets in a half smile and his eyes brighten, “I think this is going to be a big change.”