Nation's center may get its say Tuesday

But for years, Rove and his top lieutenants have touted their belief that in this highly polarized era, fewer than 1 in 10 voters still swing in their allegiance between the parties from election to election. One of their key assumptions has been that the vast majority of voters who call themselves independents actually vote like reliable Democrats or Republicans, though they don't accept the label.

Those conclusions led the White House, in the reversal of the usual practice, to direct more of its campaign spending in 2004 toward mobilizing the Republican base than converting swing voters. It also reinforced Bush's inclination to pursue an ambitious conservative agenda at home and abroad that largely unified rank-and-file and congressional Republicans in support but generated near lock-step opposition from Democrats.

"The campaign strategy was geared toward certain policy objectives, and they governed in a certain way to promote that electoral strategy," said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. "They are intertwined."

But this year, it appears that less of the electorate is permanently locked down than the White House theories projected. With Bush's approval rating among independent voters below 30%, polls in every region of the country show independents, who made up about a quarter of the vote in each of the last two elections, moving sharply against Republican candidates.

The belief that swing voters are virtually extinct "has led to a lot of President Bush's problems," said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. "Because what it leads you to do is blow off the middle [in your decisions] and only worry about the base. And there are lots of voters who seem very inclined to punish President Bush in this election for behaving that way."

Tom Beggs, Chuck Dubois and Danny Bell, three businessmen from St. Joseph, Mo., for instance, are all reconsidering their support for Bush and the GOP. Each voted for Bush in 2000; Beggs and Bell voted for him again in 2004.

But all three are deeply disenchanted with Bush now, largely over the Iraq war, and intend to express their discontent by supporting Democrat Claire McCaskill in the state's hard-fought Senate race.

The president's "overall arrogance freaks me out," said Bell, who owns an insurance agency, after watching McCaskill sweep through a downtown restaurant late last week. "It's his way or no way. He won't compromise on anything. He won't make any changes. I'm going to try to get out as much of that old [Republican] regime as I can."