Rival Tickets Are Redrawing Battlegrounds
Fresh from the Republican convention, Senator John McCain’s campaign sees evidence that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is energizing conservatives in the battleground of Ohio while improving its chances in Pennsylvania and several Western states that Senator Barack Obama has been counting on.
Mr. Obama’s campaign intends to focus heavily on the economy, especially in light of the mounting job losses, and to keep up the effort to tie the McCain-Palin ticket to the policies of President Bush. It is banking on holding all the states Senator John Kerry won in 2004 and picking up the additional electoral votes it needs by flipping some combination of Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa and Virginia into the Democratic column.
With just over eight weeks left until Election Day, the two sides are settling into an unusually broad set of state-by-state face-offs, with an increased focus on turning out supporters and tough decisions looming about where to invest time and money for new advertisements.
Yet the two men issued a joint statement on Saturday announcing that they would appear together at the World Trade Center site on Thursday, an idea that aides said originated last week when Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain to congratulate him on accepting the nomination.
Aides to Mr. Obama said the campaign was preparing advertisements tailored to issues important in specific states, like ones about the auto industry in Michigan and nuclear waste in Nevada, even as the Democrats pull back ads in Georgia, a reliably Republican state he had sought to put in play by investing heavily in registering new Democratic voters.
Strategists say that Mr. McCain can now count on a more motivated social conservative base to help him in areas like southern Ohio, where the 2004 race was settled.
While fortified turnout from this base is probably not enough to assure victory for Mr. McCain, strategists said, it would be very difficult for him to win without it. In that sense, Ms. Palin’s presence on the ticket — depending on how her candidacy fares under the scrutiny it is receiving — could be vital.
Some campaign officials hope that Ms. Palin, an Alaskan, can broaden the ticket’s appeal in the Northwest, possibly gaining traction in states like Oregon and Washington, as well as shore up Mr. McCain’s standing with social conservatives who had, up to now, been lukewarm at best about his candidacy.
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Mr. Obama’s campaign intends to focus heavily on the economy, especially in light of the mounting job losses, and to keep up the effort to tie the McCain-Palin ticket to the policies of President Bush. It is banking on holding all the states Senator John Kerry won in 2004 and picking up the additional electoral votes it needs by flipping some combination of Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa and Virginia into the Democratic column.
With just over eight weeks left until Election Day, the two sides are settling into an unusually broad set of state-by-state face-offs, with an increased focus on turning out supporters and tough decisions looming about where to invest time and money for new advertisements.
Yet the two men issued a joint statement on Saturday announcing that they would appear together at the World Trade Center site on Thursday, an idea that aides said originated last week when Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain to congratulate him on accepting the nomination.
Aides to Mr. Obama said the campaign was preparing advertisements tailored to issues important in specific states, like ones about the auto industry in Michigan and nuclear waste in Nevada, even as the Democrats pull back ads in Georgia, a reliably Republican state he had sought to put in play by investing heavily in registering new Democratic voters.
Strategists say that Mr. McCain can now count on a more motivated social conservative base to help him in areas like southern Ohio, where the 2004 race was settled.
While fortified turnout from this base is probably not enough to assure victory for Mr. McCain, strategists said, it would be very difficult for him to win without it. In that sense, Ms. Palin’s presence on the ticket — depending on how her candidacy fares under the scrutiny it is receiving — could be vital.
Some campaign officials hope that Ms. Palin, an Alaskan, can broaden the ticket’s appeal in the Northwest, possibly gaining traction in states like Oregon and Washington, as well as shore up Mr. McCain’s standing with social conservatives who had, up to now, been lukewarm at best about his candidacy.
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