On the ground
Some Republicans say they are also troubled that the McCain campaign has not been faster to build a get-out-the-vote operation in Ohio, a state that is again expected to be a key battleground. These Republicans, who have a close-up view of events, worry that McCain will be overpowered by Obama's ability to motivate activists.
"I'm going to be very honest with everyone in this room," said Hamilton County GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou as he threw his hands in the air during a speech last week at a Republican club dinner in suburban Cincinnati. "We are a little bit frustrated with the ability of the McCain campaign to get going."
This time four years ago, Triantafilou recalled, he had already taken leave from his county government job to work full time for Bush's reelection. "By June 1, we were humping hard on the presidential campaign," he said. While waiting for the McCain team, the county party has launched a voter registration drive of its own.
Volunteers such as Triantafilou were crucial to the Republicans' 2004 strategy, which entailed sorting through voting histories, church affiliation data and consumer information -- such as magazine subscriptions and grocery store purchases -- to identify millions of potential new conservative supporters. Then volunteers would visit or call these people and urge them to vote.
Many political analysts say the strategy played a large role in Bush's reelection. Bush won Ohio, for example, by about 120,000 votes -- roughly equal to the combined margins of victory in the GOP-leaning communities around Cincinnati, where the voter-identification plan was used heavily.
This time, Republican officials say, they are preparing to use these "data mining" techniques to reach voters, but will point the strategy at an additional segment of the electorate: the independent and swing voters whom Obama is targeting too.
For McCain, the challenge is to win enough of these voters to make up for a potential lack of passion among conservatives, and he is betting that his image as an independent and his moderate views on issues such as global warming will help. McCain is positioned to "find a new layer of voters . . . that's probably not available to the average Republican," said Mike DuHaime, a McCain campaign advisor.
In Ohio, McCain will target blue-collar workers outside Cleveland and Youngstown, and in the state's Appalachian counties in the southeast, who turned their backs on Obama in his primary contest with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
