A surge in Democratic voter registration is also helping.

Some Republicans in the state say privately it is all but impossible for Republican Sen. John McCain to win Pennsylvania. Others are hopeful but nervous. Still, many remain optimistic, noting that the race has been marked by wild swings in the polls.

Internal campaign polls show McCain trailing by only single digits here and the GOP continues to pound away at questions of character to argue that Obama is a risky choice.

Nonetheless, independent Pennsylvania polls have picked up sharp movement in Obama's direction since the financial crisis rocked the country. Obama had a lead of 13.8 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of state polls as of Friday, up from 2 points in mid-September.

"What we're seeing is that economics trump culture," said Chris Borick, a pollster and political scientist at Muhlenberg College. "As push has come to shove, those cultural issues and identity politics fall by the wayside."

Indeed, recent surveys have Obama making inroads with the white working class voters who once were cool to him, especially the culturally conservative Democrats in Northeastern and Southwestern Pennsylvania who voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the April primary.

Harry McGrath, the Democratic chairman of Lackawanna County, said, "Even the older, more conservative Democrat is starting to come around," he said. "I think race has become less and less an issue as the economy and the crisis with home mortgage foreclosures have come to the forefront."

By all counts, Pennsylvania, with 21 electoral votes, is once again in the crosshairs in the final weeks of a presidential campaign. The state has been among the leaders in TV advertising, with $27 million spent through the end of September.

When the McCain campaign pulled out of Michigan on Oct. 2, aides said they would make up for it by flooding the zone in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Republican county officials and other party activists here say they have noticed more McCain staffers in the state, and the campaign's travel plans indicate they are continuing to compete.

All told, McCain has spent all or part of 17 days in the state, with 24 different stops, since the beginning of June. Obama has spent all or part of seven days in the state, with 17 separate stops, including the four rallies in Philadelphia on Saturday.

Some analysts even believe that Pennsylvania is on the verge of losing its status as a perpetual battleground state and becoming a Democratic lock.

"The trend line is moving the state away from competitiveness," said pollster G. Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster. "It's becoming New Jersey rather than Ohio."

Preliminary figures show that Democrats have a 1.2 million voter-registration edge - 4.4 million, to 3.2 million for the Republicans. Since last November, Democrats have enrolled 500,000 new voters.

Madonna pointed out that, if only 30 percent of those new registrants vote for Obama, he would gain 150,000 votes, more than the margin by which Kerry won the state last time.

Hoping to change the campaign storyline, McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have tried to raise doubts about Obama's character - even his patriotism. But Kutztown University political scientist Jack M. Treadway said that those concerns aren't being heard as clearly as they might have been even a few weeks ago.

"The public doesn't care," Treadway said. He believes it would take a terrorist attack, a major Obama scandal or something equally huge to change the race.

Pennsylvania Democrats, meanwhile, are expressing optimism, but warning against complacency.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., for instance, said that "there is still some persuasion to do," particularly with older voters who have been skeptical of Obama.

In Luzerne County, there was a "bereavement period" over Hillary Clinton's loss, said Mark Bufilino, the Democratic chairman. "But these people are diehard Democrats" and they are doing a "slow boil" over the economy, he said.