On to the main event for McCain, Obama

St. Paul, Minn. — — After nailing down the essentials in Denver and St. Paul, Barack Obama and John McCain have begun a two-month quest to win an essential group of voters who were at neither convention: independents.

In a late-summer phenomenon unlike any in recent memory, each major candidate has already locked down the vast majority of his party — roughly 85 percent — leaving a relatively minuscule number of voters in play.

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Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Barack Obama appears Friday in Pennsylvania, trying to clinch the bread-and-butter vote that sometimes eluded him in Democratic primaries.

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Morry Gash/Associated Press

John McCain and Sarah Palin stump Friday in Wisconsin, where Republicans think there’s a chance to peel a state from the other party’s column.

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Mark Stehle/ Associated Press

Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden spends some face time with Holly Raudonis (center) and Marilyn Reedinger at a diner in Philadelphia on Friday.

McCain made strides last week in securing the conservative base of the Republican Party with his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The GOP convention was delayed by a Gulf Coast hurricane and distracted briefly by the disclosure of Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy.

But by most accounts, McCain pulled together the convention at the end by offering up himself as a battle-tested warrior prepared to shake up Washington.

Likewise, Obama succeeded a week before in his mission to raise voters’ comfort level about electing the nation’s first African-American president and telling voters what he’s talking about in his refrain about change.

What lies in front of the candidates now is a small fraction of the electorate — 12 percent to 15 percent in polls last week — that remains persuadable in two months’ time.

Pollster Ed Reilly described the current state of this contest as extraordinary, considering that voter sentiment typically firms up much later in the election.

“There’s not a lot out there that’s movable and they are mostly independents,” said Reilly, who conducted a National Journal poll last week reflecting the hardened attitude of voters.

Echoed Rep. Tom Davis, a retiring congressman from Virginia who often is a critic of his Republican Party, “This race is all about independents.”

In that effort, Davis added, the GOP has “a generic deficiency”: voters’ strong preference for Democratic candidates this year, which recent polls measure as a double-digit advantage.

The same polls show that McCain has largely evened the odds with Obama thanks in part to his reputation as a rebellious senator unafraid to challenge the orthodoxy of his party, a theme he sounded repeatedly in his acceptance speech Thursday night.

But Republican strategists acknowledge that McCain has little room for error.

“With the structural problem the Republicans have, they can’t leave any votes on the table,” said Terry Nelson, field director for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in 2004.

The addition of Palin to the ticket has revved up social conservatives across the country, and Republicans are hoping that enthusiasm will help close the so-called “enthusiasm gap” with Obama, who has had stronger support from his voters.

Palin appears to be generating the kind of excitement that can draw Republicans to the polls and satisfy social conservatives and evangelicals with whom McCain has had little rapport over the years.

Can Palin help snare independent voters?

National polls last week reflecting Palin’s selection showed independents breaking roughly even between McCain and Obama or Obama slightly ahead.

Few if any vice presidential candidates have had a significant impact on elections beyond a 2 to 3 percentage point improvement in their home states. Republicans hope this year is different.

“We may have found our next Reagan and she wears a skirt,” the Virginia-based Americans for Limited Government, a conservative advocacy group, proclaimed in an e-mail to members on Friday.

The Oct. 2 debate between Palin and Sen. Joe Biden at Washington University in St. Louis has become one of the most anticipated political events of the fall. On Friday, the Republican National Committee went so far as to launch an attack Web site aimed at convincing voters that Biden “is not your average Joe.”

Democrats insist that the hoopla surrounding Palin diverts from the central question of this campaign: Which presidential candidate will succeed in convincing people that he can bring relief from cascading economic troubles and change from failing government policies?

Do independents differ much from Republicans and Democrats in their concerns? Like everybody, they’re worried about the economy. But independents tend to be far more opposed to the Iraq war than Republicans and much less concerned about the threat of terrorism — both good for Obama.

The campaign has shaped up thus far as one of themes: Obama’s mantra of change versus more of the same up against McCain’s emphasis on character and experience.

But McCain also speaks of change — underscoring the real possibility that the nation is experiencing one of those realigning elections that don’t often come around. Some predict that as many as 25 million more voters than in 2004 could show up at the polls.

In St. Paul last week, some Republicans worried that November could be shaping up like 1980, when Republicans took control after what was considered a failed presidency — only in reverse.

“This year, it’s a very similar situation,” remarked David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Keene spelled out what may determine the choice of the minority of persuadable voters that remain: “The public would like to get rid of Republicans, but they don’t know if Barack Obama is somebody they can trust.”