Democratic presidential contetst to end in Republican-leaning states

WASHINGTON — As Democratic leaders try to end the continuing fight for their party's 2008 presidential nomination, the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton heads into an ironic phase: of the final seven states to vote, only one, Oregon, has supported a Democratic nominee in the last two White House contests.

The fate of Obama and Clinton, then, could rest in the hands of voters in states that, for the most part, will have little impact on the outcome of the general election this fall, beginning May 6 with two reliably Republican states, Indiana and North Carolina, and ending June 3 with two even more reliably Republican states, South Dakota and Montana. In between are West Virginia on March 13 and Kentucky and Oregon on May 20.

Only Oregon has voted for a Democratic nominee in the last two elections - Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. But the others supported George W. Bush by double digits in his reelection in 2004 and in his first bid in 2000, with the exception of West Virginia, which gave him an 8-point victory margin in 2000.

(Guam holds a caucus May 3, and Puerto Rico has a primary June 1.)

"It's that kind of year for the Democrats - full of irony," said Bert Rockman, head of the Department of Political Science at Purdue University in Indiana. A contest that was widely expected to end as early as Feb. 5 - the day of the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses in 22 states - is nearly another three months old, he added, with a handful of mostly so-called "red states" set to render the final verdicts on Obama and Clinton.

"I don't think anyone saw this coming," Rockman said.

Indeed, Obama and Clinton have no choice but to finish their contest in Republican-leaning states, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters this week. The campaigns have to go all out in the remaining states "whether they are battlegrounds or not" in the fall, Plouffe said.

The Obama campaign arrived in Indiana in mid-March and started registering new voters, using free Dave Matthews concert tickets and a chance to play basketball with the Illinois senator as incentives to get voting-age Hoosiers to register to vote. And on Friday, the campaign announced plans to conduct a 50-state voter registration drive for the fall, underscoring Obama's argument to uncommitted party superdelegates that he can grow the vote in states where the Democratic Party has not been able to compete in recent elections.

"We've seen too many elections where turnout was less than 50 percent," said Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand. "We know we can do better - this year and beyond."

Democratic presidential primary voter registration in Indiana has jumped some 160,000 since January, a trend that had benefited Obama until this week. But Indiana's Democratic primary is open, meaning Republicans and independents can vote in it as well, and that can skewer the results or keep the party full of "chaos and tumult," as conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has been urging "crossover voters" to do since before the March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio.

So far, at least 10 percent of the newly registered voters in Indiana are former Republicans, according to estimates by state election officials. There's no evidence of any organized crossover effort, however, according to Rockman.

Some 165,000 new Democrats have registered in North Carolina, but most of them are first-time voters, according to the State Board of Elections. And even if the new voter registrations don't transform North Carolina into a battleground state in the fall, "they could force the GOP to defend their turf," said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It's difficult to assess the impact of crossover voting in presidential primaries.

But in Pennsylvania, Democratic rolls rose by more than 300,000 for last Tuesday's primary, more than half of whom were Republicans. Clinton won in Pennsylvania by almost 10 percentage points, on the strength of support from white working-class voters. Her victory margin was large enough to keep the Democratic contest going, in spite of party leaders' calls for an end. And according to exit polls in Pennsylvania, 10 percent of those who voted in the primary said they intended to vote for McCain in the fall general election.

Obama "certainly has room to grow the vote" in Republican-leaning states, said Guillory. But "he still has problems" with the white blue-collar working-class voters known as "Reagan Democrats" who supported Clinton in Pennsylvania and who still lean toward the GOP, not only in the South but in Indiana, he added.