COUNTDOWN 2008: McCain-Obama contest could be nail-biter here

Republicans will offer candy to trick-or-treaters in Gilmer County tonight, they’ll wave signs for John McCain across Forsyth County on Saturday, and they’ll rally in a park in Macon on Sunday.

Barack Obama volunteers, meanwhile, have 175 locations around the state where teams will work in three shifts a day to go door-to-door, conduct phone banks and generally work to get out the vote.

The final push is on, and with early voting ending today, the emphasis shifts to Election Day Tuesday.

“Obama has a real shot to win in Georgia,” former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland said Thursday. “The race is closer than people think.”

The latest polls show the Obama-McCain race to be neck-and-neck —- one poll showed McCain ahead by 1 point, another had him up by 5 but yet another had him down by 3. And while the race for Georgia’s 15 electoral votes is tight, neither side appears to be investing significant cash or resources to win it in the final days. Neither campaign has announced visits by the candidates or their top surrogates. As of Thursday, neither had bought last-minute television advertising here.

And that, Matt Towery believes, is a real mistake for the Obama campaign.

“If the Obama campaign goes on the air with television advertising in this city, in this state, beginning this week to Election Day, Barack Obama will win Georgia,” said Towery, the former Republican state lawmaker and CEO of Atlanta-based InsiderAdvantage. “If he doesn’t go on TV, Obama will lose Georgia. It’s that simple.”

Towery’s firm has polled the race in Georgia and has consistently showed it to be closer than most other firms.

The Obama campaign will not discuss its advertising strategies and provides no hints as to whether it plans to return to the state’s paid airwaves. Instead, the Democrat’s campaign is all about the ground game: identifying voters who did not take part in early or advance voting, and letting them know what’s at stake and why they should vote for Obama.

“After eight years of failed Bush-McCain policies, Georgians are hungry for change,” Lee Goodall, the Obama campaign’s Georgia field director, wrote to volunteers this week. “Over one million people have already voted early in the Peach state. But early votes won’t be enough. And our get-out-the-vote operation will only win if supporters like you get involved and make it happen.”

On the Republican side, McCain’s campaign has coordinated its final efforts with the state Republican Party, and with the campaign of incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who is in the fight of his political life against Democrat Jim Martin. As goes one, so go the others.

“We’re focused on trying to push and motivate all our county chairs to do some sort of effort to ramp up the last 72 hours,” said Clint Murphy, McCain’s deputy campaign manager for Georgia. “We had the Georgia GOP do a push for 72 hours. It goes into identifying who has not voted yet and make sure they get to the polls on Tuesday.”

Murphy was referring to the party’s traditional 72-hour program, a method the GOP uses to mobilize its voters. It’s been a key to the party’s success over the past several election cycles.

But recently some Republicans have grumbled that the vaunted operation has not been organized as in years past. Georgia Republican Party executive director Ben Fry, however, said with the state’s emphasis on early voting this year, the party had to adjust.

“We’re not limiting ourselves to three days before the election,” Fry said.

Ralph Reed, the former head of the national Christian Coalition and a former state party chairman, said he has not seen the typical 72-hour operation most Republicans are familiar with.

“It is not on nearly the same level as 2002 or 2004, but it is operational in key counties, such as Gwinnett, Cobb, north Fulton, where I would expect 65 to 70 percent of the vote will take place,” Reed said.

DOWN TO THE WIRE

Several national election-tracking Web sites have the Georgia race for president and U.S. Senate to be exceedingly tight. And both campaigns have started to generate attention from national press. Here’s a look.

>Pollster.com labels the McCain-Obama race in Georgia a tossup. The race between Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin is also a tossup, the site says.

>Electoral-vote.com gives Georgia a “barely GOP” label in both races.

>RealClearPolitics.com has both races labeled tossups.

>At fivethirtyeight.com, statistician Nate Silver has McCain in command in Georgia with a 92 percent chance of winning, and says the state “Leans GOP” in the Senate race, giving Chambliss a 75 percent chance of retaining his seat.

>When University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato looks into his crystal ball, he sees a Georgia race still too close to call and a U.S. Senate race headed to a runoff.

 Associated Press
BATTLE FOR 270 ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES 
Barack Obama appears to lead John McCain by an estimated 123 electoral votes, enough to capture the presidency without winning any of the remaining tossup states. 

How each state is leaning toward the candidates 
270 needed to win

OBAMA: 286 
186 votes Solid; 100 Leaning
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MCCAIN: 163 
122 Solid; 41 Leaning
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89 Tossup 
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States are color-coded on a map of the U.S. to indicate which states are Solid, Leaning or Tossup states.
Note: Associated Press analysis of public and private polls, television spending and interviews with strategists in both parties