Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

McCain's musts for Pa.

Turnout is key: Lots of his base; less of Obama's.

To carry Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Republican John McCain needs a couple of big things to go right, as well as most of the little ones.

He must get overwhelming support from his party's rural base and siphon away working-class Democrats in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Barack Obama's expected big vote in Philadelphia and its suburbs must underwhelm. And rain in the eastern part of the state wouldn't hurt.

There's a lot of pressure: With options on the electoral map dwindling in the final days, Pennsylvania has become central to McCain's hope of winning the White House.

"To use a baseball analogy, I think McCain has got to almost throw a perfect game to win Pennsylvania," said Christopher Borick, a pollster and professor at Muhlenberg College. "I think he can close it, make it a more competitive race, but to win, everything would have to break his way."

GOP strategists and leaders say they believe Democrat Obama's support is soft in the state, which has favorable demographics for McCain - an older and whiter population than the national average, and regions with socially conservative working-class Democrats who have backed Republicans in the past.

On the other hand, Democrats have registered hundreds of thousands of new voters. Now there are 1.2 million more registered Democrats than Republicans, double the party's advantage in 2004, and the Obama campaign is confident it can get the new voters to the polls. McCain must hope that's not the case.

Obama has led by double digits for more than a month in most public polls of the state, and his party enjoys a big lead in voter registration. McCain, analysts say, also carries the twin burdens of association with a deeply unpopular president and of history: Voters usually punish the nominee of the party in the White House when the economy sours.

There are some indications the Pennsylvania race is tightening, however, including a Mason-Dixon poll last week for NBC News in which Obama's lead, 47 percent to 43 percent, was within the margin of error of plus or minus 4 points.

"This is no runaway. It's going to surprise a lot of people," said GOP state chairman Robert Gleason, of Johnstown. He said party phone banks had identified more voters for McCain than they had for President Bush in 2004.

Other battlegrounds - Missouri and Florida, for example - have been closer longer, but McCain has elevated Pennsylvania to strategic importance because his campaign is making a major push to capture a state that has been reliably Democratic in presidential elections for 20 years.

"Pennsylvania is the Ohio of 2008," Democratic national chairman Howard Dean said last week. "If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole shooting match. McCain has chosen to make his last stand here."

Since all the other most closely contested states were won by the GOP four years ago, McCain needs to pick up a Democratic blue state to assemble an Electoral College majority of 270 or more votes.

It's clear that Pennsylvania is a major target, based on the measures of advertising money and the most precious campaign resource of all: candidate time.

Obama spent at least $24.8 million on TV ads in Pennsylvania from April 3 through Monday, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks the cost and content of political advertising. (The figure includes spending during Obama's primary struggle with Hillary Rodham Clinton.)

Meanwhile, McCain bought $20.9 million worth of time in Pennsylvania, the tracking firm said. Nationally, the Democrat has outspent him, 3-1, in ad money in recent weeks.

Since he wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March, McCain has visited the state 30 times, holding 43 events. His running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has stopped in 14 times, appearing at 23 events, since Aug. 30.

Obama has visited the state nine times, holding 20 events, since he wrapped up the Democratic nod in June. Running mate Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware has had 14 events on seven visits to the state since Aug. 29.

For all the attention he has been giving it, McCain appears to have a narrow path to victory in Pennsylvania, analysts and Republican officials say.

His strategy rests on running well on the traditional Republican turf in the rural center and northern tier of the state - the so-called T. McCain also hopes to pull away white working-class Democrats in the industrialized regions of southwestern and northeastern Pennsylvania.

"Out west, there are a lot of values voters," said Gleason, the state chairman. "Abortion is very important."

Obama is expected to wallop McCain in Philadelphia, which usually provides the margins for statewide Democratic wins, and carry Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh. But Republicans are confident they can carry some white ethnic wards in South Philadelphia, in Northeast Philadelphia, and along the Delaware River, dampening Obama's city vote.

The goal is to do better than Bush did four years ago, when John Kerry carried the city by 412,106 votes.

GOP officials believe they are getting traction with Obama's recent remark that he wanted to "spread the wealth around," a comment made to an Ohio worker who asked about his pledge to raise taxes on the wealthy, including some small businesses, and cut them for lower-wage workers.

Fellow members of the Polish American String Band are responding to the McCain critique that Obama can't be trusted on taxes, said GOP lawyer Brian Preski, who was chief of staff to former state House Speaker John M. Perzel (R., Phila.).

"Most of those guys are union men . . . and even they say they are not for Obama," Preski said. "It's not the black-and-white stuff you think you'd hear from guys from Port Richmond and South Philadelphia. The attitude is, 'Hey, I may be working as a cop now, but someday I may want to own a small business, and I don't want to be taxed into oblivion.' "

If everything else fails for McCain in Pennsylvania, he might want to hope for rain, maybe a sleet storm that stretches from Philadelphia and its suburbs through Allentown.

A study published last year in the Journal of Politics confirmed that precipitation on Election Day helps Republicans. After comparing returns and weather reports for every U.S. county in the 1948 through 2000 presidential elections, the researchers concluded that the GOP candidate gained 2.5 percentage points for every inch of rain or snow above normal.

"A really crappy nor'easter that keeps spinning around over half the state's population would be ideal," pollster Borick joked. "When you're looking for things like that, it says you are in an uphill battle."

The long-range Weather Channel forecast for Tuesday calls for high temperatures in the mid-60s and sunny skies - with a 10 percent chance of precipitation.