A pessimistic review of Monday’s gubernatorial debate between Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Alex Sink would suggest that little new ground was covered and that it was a brutal, personal slugfest.

Indeed, with eight days left and no clear leader, the candidates came out swinging. Both Sink and Scott held up answering questions to “go back,” and address charges lobbed during previous exchanges.

Sink openly scoffed at the accusations aimed at her business record, which Scott took as a sign she wasn’t taking the issue seriously. “In every debate, we’ve talked about NationsBank. You’ve never once responded to what you did at NationsBank, how you defrauded all those seniors with your tellers,” Scott said. “Oh, laugh about it. Those seniors aren’t laughing.”

Scott faced accusations of his own, specifically, questions over a deposition tape in which he refused to certify that he signed a letter, while admitting it looked like his signature on the page. “You sign a lot of letters when you’re a CEO of a company. It’s — you know, award letters and all sorts of things like that,” Scott said. “You trust the people around you.”

Voters have heard all the allegations aired before, though perhaps not with such forcefulness as was exhibited Monday night. It was, all in all, one of the most painful hours of Florida television this election cycle.

But the optimist would suggest that it might be a sign. If very little new ground is being broken, then the candidates must have communicated their positions as well as they — or their handlers — are willing to allow. Voters must now choose, and their options, based on tonight’s debate, are clear.

For Scott, the entire race begins and ends with one issue: jobs. He said he wants to cut property taxes by 19 percent, phase out the business tax and reform regulation as a means to economic growth.

“You can go all across the state, and developments have been killed by all the regulation, all the paperwork. In fact you have to go to three or four agencies,” Scott said. “I’ll give you an example. Down close where I live, Ave Maria University was recently built. Just in permits, just — not any building — just for the land, 78 permits, took years to do.”

He painted Sink as an Obamacrat, and said the promises in her platform, totaled up, would result the growth of government spending, despite her protests that she can improve government efficiencies to pay for expanded services. “She’s going to increase spending $12.5 billion and going to save $700 million. That’s Obama math,” Scott said.

Sink described herself as a “fiscal conservative,” and said has no idea where Scott came up with his numbers. “I am not raising taxes,” Sink said. “Look, I grew up on a family farm, and I learned how to balance the checkbook. You heard me say the other night, I’m a math major. I know how to do numbers. We are not raising taxes.”

She did, however, back off on one platform point — that she would give state workers a raise. “Not in an environment where we have a $2 billion shortfall. It’s not going to be possible,” she said.

Outside of the murky water of budget predictions and estimates, the lines are even more clear.

Scott would sign further state restrictions on abortion, and said he is, “pro-life with the exceptions of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Sink said she supports existing law.

Asked about the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon spill, Sink used the opportunity to drill oil companies. “Let me tell you what, the first and most important thing that we learned as Floridians is that to approve drilling in Florida waters which is within 3 to 10 miles of our coastline, would be a horrible idea,” she said. “We learned that accidents can happen, and an accident like that close into our shores would totally destroy our tourist economy. That’s the biggest lesson I think that we as Floridians learned.”

Scott criticized the current administration for mishandling the disaster. “What they should — what Governor Crist and my opponent should have been doing down there, they should have stayed down there until the problem was solved,” Scott said. “And also explain that, you know, the beaches were basically open. … We should have been down there when they had all that possibility to be on national TV to say, look, the oil spill is not here.”

Sink opposes bringing an Arizona-style immigration law to Florida, but wants to increase penalties on business that hire illegals. Scott supports harsher immigration rules, but is against mass deportation, and said that once the legal immigration process works, “the illegal immigration process will go away.”

There are a few similarities, too. Both candidates said they support maintaining strong sanctions against Cuba. Neither could correctly identify what the minimum wage is in Florida. And after months of negative campaign ads, each has contempt for the other side.

“Let me clarify who has been charge in Tallahassee,” Sink said of current problems in the state. “It’s been one party, Rick Scott’s party.”

She touted endorsements from 16 state newspapers, to which Scott replied, “Absolutely, most of them endorsed Barack Obama. You’re an Obama liberal.”

One of Sink’s staff members was even fired for trying to communicate with the candidate via text message during the debate — in violation of CNN’s rules — which Scott’s team quickly turned into Facebook fodder: “Cheating in the debate? There’s an app for that.”

Has it been a rough ride? Yes. Have the attacks gotten personal? Yes. But do voters have a clear understanding of where each candidate stands on the major issues? Absolutely.

And unlike many runaway races around the country, in this one, their decisions — at even the most minute, individual level — will decide who occupies the governor’s mansion next.

Every vote counts. As the above graph from the New York Times’ Nate Silver shows, the race is literally as tight as it can get.