WHO NEEDS 'EM:

On the first day she was eligible to vote as a new American citizen, Nancy Osores left home before her pizzeria shift, got on a bus and rode it to a place in her new country's political history.

She joined a wave.

An unprecedented number of Latinos are voting in this election, casting early ballots with an enthusiasm that could sink the presidential hopes of Republicans in the must-win, always-close state of Florida.

Early in-person voting has more than doubled among Latinos in that state, as people like Osores, a Peruvian-born grandmother, rush to cast ballots against the man who's stirred new passions for civic participation.

She cut off a question about Donald Trump.

''No, no, no. No way," Osores said.

"The racism. The sexism."

Osores came to the U.S. to join her daughter in 2000. On the first day of early voting, the new U.S. citizen went to a union-organized gathering point, hopped on the psychedelic-painted "Love Bus," and rode to a Miami municipal building two weeks ago as advance voting opened.

She waited in line a half-hour before voting for Democrats up and down the ticket. As she walked out she offered a thumbs up.

Florida political science professor Dan Smith calculates there's been a 152-per-cent increase in early Latino turnout from this stage in 2012. Steve Schale, a former state director for Obama, said he believes it could save the party from a post-Obama decline in African-American turnout.

More than two million new people have become citizens since the last election. Democrats are also aided by younger Cubans who lean farther left than previous generations, and an influx of Puerto Ricans who are already eligible to vote as U.S. citizens.

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