The catch of Election Day will be undecided voters

Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida are critical states for candidates.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

AUSTIN, Texas — The battle for the White House is now a 60-day sprint, with John McCain and Barack Obama in pursuit of an elusive political catch: undecided voters who’ll pick the next president.

The nominees emerged from back-to-back national conventions with their political bases invigorated and the general public newly engaged in the contest.

And though the political mood and national appetite for change still favor Democrats, GOP consultant Don Sipple said Obama “is nowhere near having closed the deal.”

“Both campaigns have to transmit to voters in much more lucid terms what benefit they would bring to American lives,” he said. “Specifically, what are they going to do?”

Candidates headed this weekend to battleground states — to Pennsylvania with a promise to fix the ailing economy and McCain to “Reagan Democrat” country in Michigan, where he introduced running mate Sarah Palin to an enthusiastic crowd.

The race will probably be fought much as it has been in recent elections, in a handful of states where polls are close and every electoral vote counts.

Four are critical: Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

And four GOP-leaning states — Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Virginia — appear equally up for grabs.

Team Obama will work to ensure young voters turn out in the same numbers as the primary, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on campaign messaging at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said.

The McCain camp will counter with suburban soccer moms and social conservatives.

For both sides, that means targeting a few million still-undecided voters who’ll finally decide things in November.

For Obama, the task for the next 60 days will be to press his message of change and disabuse voters of doubts about his experience and his historic quest to become the country’s first black president.

For McCain, his challenge is to cast himself as a true change agent and the stronger candidate on national security, boosted by his support of the successful troop surge in Iraq.

At the same time, he must distance himself from his unpopular party by deflecting Democratic claims that he would be a continuation of the Bush presidency.

Democratic political consultant Chris Lehane said the Obama camp must stay on the offense to blunt McCain campaign efforts to discredit him.

Obama has strong appeal to young voters and blacks. With the polls close, Lehane said Obama will have to battle McCain for “working-class white women in the exurbs” — a demographic McCain appealed to last week by choosing Palin to share the ticket.

“If it’s a close election, this is the 2 to 3 percent of the electorate you’re going to have to take to win,” Lehane said.

McCain has had lukewarm support among religious conservatives, who were key to electing President Bush.

But the surprise selection of Palin, the governor of Alaska, appears to have closed the enthusiasm gap.

Former Bush political consultant Karl Rove says the McCain camp can capitalize on Palin’s outsized persona as a gun-toting, anti-abortion “hockey mom” who shares voters’ values.

“Send her to battleground states and have her particularly focus on the two groups that she can reach and reach well — independents and soft Republicans in the suburbs, particularly women, and then small-town America, the Clinton voters in places like Moreland, Pa., and the suburbs of Detroit,” said Rove, now a Fox News pundit.

Whether Palin will expand the Palin reinforces a red-meat Republican appeal aimed at the party faithful but runs counter to McCain’s call to end “the constant partisan rancor” in Washington by reaching out to independents and disaffected Democrats.

The Obama campaign plans to dispatch prominent Democratic women to key states, including Obama’s former opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who heads to Florida this week.

A key moment of the fall campaign will be debates, including the vice presidential matchup pitting Palin against veteran Sen. Joe Biden.

Sipple said that although Palin has rejuvenated social conservatives, it’s the top of the ticket who wins or loses elections.

“People vote for president, not vice president,” he said. “So I don’t think anybody should be carried away at this point that Palin’s going to wag the dog.”