Sunday, October 31, 2004
October 31, 2004
Focus Narrowing as Close Contest Nears Finish LineBy R. W. APPLE Jr.
LEVELAND, Oct. 30 - The 2004 presidential campaign is ending as it began, focused with blazing intensity on no more than a dozen hard-fought states, with the tinglingly close contest between President Bush and Senator John Kerry depending most, both parties agree, on three pivotal states: Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The candidates have invested tens of millions of dollars on advertising there, deployed armies of field workers and spent hundreds of hours on the stump, including visits in the race's final weekend. With the furor over a new Osama bin Laden tape filtering through the campaigns, both men crossed through Midwestern swing states on Saturday and are to appear in Florida on Sunday.
As a result, cities like Orlando, Pittsburgh and Columbus, and their suburbs, have watched the struggle from close range while Chicago, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles have squinted at it from bleacher seats.
In the end, the outcome is likely to be decided by what political pros call "the ground war": the effort by both parties to get every supporter to the polls on Tuesday. Although there are almost limitless ways either candidate could reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to win, whoever wins two of the big three states would have an advantage that would be difficult to overcome.
With only 72 hours until the polls begin opening, Pennsylvania, with 21 electoral votes, appeared to be trending Mr. Kerry's way, with most but not all opinion surveys showing him ahead by about three percentage points. Mr. Bush has failed to dent the four suburban Philadelphia counties, whose liberal attitudes on social issues like abortion and gun control have overshadowed their economic conservatism.
Florida, with 27 electoral votes, was agonizingly close four years ago, with far-reaching consequences, and it is the hardest of the big states to read this year. If anyone holds an advantage, it is probably Mr. Bush, if only because of the influence of his brother Jeb, the governor. But the Democrats, energized by the sting of their agonizing defeat in 2000, seem to be benefiting more from the outpouring of early voters.
Here in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes, Mr. Kerry has capitalized on job losses during the Bush administration. He seems to hold a tenuous lead as volunteers from both parties pour into the state, often seen as a microcosm of the nation, to get out the vote. He has taken to carrying a lucky buckeye in his pocket. No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio, and the state has gone with the winner in all but two elections since 1892.
"It's as close as it could conceivably be," said Eric Rademacher, who directs the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll. "Closer than I've ever seen before. Close here and several other states. We may not know the outcome until mid-November."
Searching for ways to salvage a victory even if beaten in the big shows, both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush belatedly began wooing the voters of Michigan (17 electoral votes). A win there could very nearly make up for a loss in Ohio. They have also intensified their pursuit of a troika of smaller Midwestern states that Al Gore won by narrow margins in 2000: Minnesota and Wisconsin (10 each) and Iowa (7). All three are treacherously close this time, with Ralph Nader a real threat to Mr. Kerry in Minnesota, a state notably fond of third-party candidates.
Colorado (9), New Mexico and Nevada (5 each) and New Hampshire (4) are all in play as well, with the potential of contributing to a winning equation.
A series of hairbreadth finishes could plunge the nation into treacherous straits, with lawsuits in multiple states, a far more complex prospect than the legal contest in 2000, which was confined to Florida. Several suits have already been filed. But the huge numbers of newly registered voters could confound all the forecasts.
Battleground-state previews by New York Times reporters follow.
Arkansas
LITTLE ROCK, Oct. 30 - Almost alone in the South, Arkansas has traditionally been a place where Democrats can win federal office. Even though President Bush carried the state in 2000 by five percentage points, both of its senators and all but one of its House members are Democrats.
"Until relatively recently Arkansas didn't have as big an influx of people from other parts of the country," said Andrew Dowdle, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, adding that white voters had not abandoned the Democratic Party as they had in other parts of the region. "Without the battle over race and without new voters coming in, the Republican Party never really had a chance to get the dominance that it got in some of the other states," Dr. Dowdle said.
But as more Republican voters have moved in, that balance has been shifting. Voters in the state, which Democrats refer to as a Southern oasis and Republicans label a place of weakening entrenchment, tend to reflect the more economically and socially conservative values espoused by Mr. Bush.
Several voters supporting Mr. Bush said they liked his commitment to low taxes and his opposition to abortion. Consultants and campaign officials say security is the most important issue in the state, which would also tend to help Mr. Bush, because many polls suggest most voters have more confidence in his ability to keep the country safe.
At the same time, aides to Senator John Kerry are seeing renewed opportunity, with a recent poll showing that he had pulled even with Mr. Bush. And with many Arkansans fighting in Iraq, political experts say, there has been intense news coverage of the rising casualties. That, coupled with mixed economic news and what polls suggested were strong debate performances, could be working to Mr. Kerry's advantage, they say.
Neither candidate has visited since the summer, but radio and television have suddenly been flooded with advertisements as the Republicans move to counter a late push by the Democrats. And the Kerry campaign is hoping that a visit by former President Bill Clinton on Sunday will spur turnout among core Democratic voters.
Indeed, each campaign says that turnout holds the key to victory. "Everybody says, 'Well, who's going to carry Arkansas?' " said Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is the state chairman of the Bush campaign. "The answer is whoever gets their voters out." — DIANE CARDWELL
Colorado
DENVER, Oct. 30 - The traditional recipe for cooking up a swing state does not fit Colorado.
There are no old urban manufacturing hubs stripped of blue-collar jobs as in Ohio or Wisconsin, no mix of immigrants and retirees as in Florida. Rural and suburban Republicans have securely dominated the party registration lists for decades, and unaffiliated voters tend to break to the right.
The state went for Bill Clinton in 1992 - but only because Ross Perot did so well.
Judging by the history and the numbers, political analysts say the odds have to favor President Bush on Tuesday despite the slipping of his lead. Several recent polls have Mr. Bush ahead by six percentage points, about half the margin it was a month ago.
What Mr. Kerry must base his hopes on in Colorado are the cumulative differences between this year and all others before it. Many of those differences are cryptic.
More than 262,000 new voters have registered since January, and Democrats estimate that about 75,000 of them are Hispanics, who make up a sixth of the state's population and who are expected to come out in record numbers for the Democratic candidate for the open United States Senate seat, Attorney General Ken Salazar.
Mr. Salazar, Colorado's only Hispanic statewide office holder, has led in most polls over his Republican rival, the beer magnate Peter H. Coors, but whether Mr. Salazar's popularity can extend to help Mr. Kerry is uncertain, analysts say.
As in most states, the war in Iraq and the economy preoccupy voters, but there are significant differences between Colorado and some other swing states on those points.
First, the military presence here is enormous, in installations like Fort Carson, the United States Air Force Academy and Norad, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. And the Vietnam generation - however that cuts in this election - is strongly represented. A higher proportion of Colorado's military veterans served during the Vietnam War than any state's except Alaska, according to the Census Bureau.
The economy, which boomed in the 1990's during the dot-com bubble, has sputtered for years. In the first half of this year, Colorado had the fastest rate of increase in consumer bankruptcies in the nation, according to Lundquist Consulting Inc., which tracks bankruptcy trends.
If Mr. Kerry does win here, it will not be a result of a final media blitz. His campaign cut much of its television advertising, at least in the Denver market, on Monday. But the Bush campaign is still pushing hard, station managers said. Mr. Bush has visited the state twice in just the last month, and Mr. Kerry has come to Colorado six times during the campaign. — KIRK JOHNSON
Florida
MIAMI, Oct. 30 - Florida remains intensely contested, with President Bush and Senator John Kerry drawing nearly equal support, both candidates still dashing through the state and wary voters gripped by anxiety.
About 1.5 million early and absentee votes have already been cast, suggesting that turnout among the 10.3 million registered voters could outpace that in 2000. Newspaper analyses have shown far more Democrats than Republicans casting early votes in person, many of them African-American.
The Kerry campaign has seized on residual anger from the state's recount in 2000, which gave Mr. Bush a victory margin of 537 votes. Democratic lawyers are pouring into the state to watch for voter intimidation or disenfranchisement. Republicans, meanwhile, say they may challenge the eligibility of some Democratic voters.
Polls show Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry within a few percentage points in the state, though one, by The Los Angeles Times, showed Mr. Bush with an eight-point lead.
Mr. Bush benefits from Florida's economy, which has outperformed the nation's as a whole, and from the state's large military population, which appears to be leaning in his direction. He also has the advantage of his brother, the popular Gov. Jeb Bush, who has put aside his state duties for the last days of the campaign to focus on helping the president win Florida's 27 electoral votes.
But political strategists say Mr. Kerry could benefit from 1.5 million new voters, many of whom are independents and likely to vote Democratic. Many are Hispanic immigrants, including Cubans, who usually vote Republican but may shift to Mr. Kerry out of anger over Mr. Bush's Cuba policy.
Governor Bush will appear with the president at rallies in Miami, Gainesville and Tampa on Sunday, while Mr. Kerry, who made three stops here on Friday, will return Sunday for an event in Tampa. Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush's wife, Laura, and their twin daughters traveled the state last week, too, while former President Bill Clinton came on behalf of Mr. Kerry.
The Republicans have enlisted 90,000 volunteers to help make calls, knock on doors and drive voters to the polls. Democrats are largely leaving such work to independent groups like America Coming Together.
Civil rights groups are worried about possible challenges of voter eligibility, saying Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican appointee of Governor Bush, has not done enough to prevent frivolous challenges.
Rights groups and Democratic politicians waged unsuccessful legal battles seeking printed receipts for voters who use touch-screen voting machines and fighting the disqualification of new voters who left information off their registration forms. — ABBY GOODNOUGH
Iowa
CEDAR RAPIDS, Oct. 30 - The state that propelled Senator John Kerry's presidential bid with a stunning victory in the caucuses last winter has all but lost its famed composure in recent days, rattled by the intensity with which Mr. Kerry and President Bush are now trying to win its seven electoral votes.
On Friday, under armed guard and police escort with flashing lights, the election auditor of Linn County, Linda Langenberg, moved 30,000 ballots already completed by early voters to the Cedar Rapids police headquarters for safekeeping until they are counted on Election Day. "Everyone is so worried," she explained. "We're trying to do everything we can to protect their ballots."
Iowa has backed Democrats for president since 1988, but former Vice President Al Gore won the state by just 4,000 votes in 2000 and recent polls show the presidential contest here virtually deadlocked.
The narrow contest has brought the state numerous last-minute visits by both major candidates and their high-profile supporters: former New York mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Edward I. Koch for Mr. Bush; the rock star Jon Bon Jovi for Mr. Kerry.
With their caucuses, Iowans are used to such national attention and take their voting seriously. In a measure of their devotion to voting, Ordinance 49.105 lets election officials have unruly voters arrested - but only after they get a chance to cast their ballots.
Iowa is a state with lots of small towns that are shrinking and cities that are maintaining their own but are being outdistanced by robust suburban areas with white-collar jobs like the insurance industry. There are extremely liberal enclaves in Iowa City and Ames. But Iowa also has a very strong fundamentalist Christian community that became very political in the 1980's.
"When you add it all up, the race is now 49 to 49 because these people, like the rest of the country, are in two pretty evenly divided political camps," said Steffen W. Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University.
Republican officials say they think they can hand Iowa to Mr. Bush through the state's farmers, and they are focusing on motivating rural voters. Democrats and their allied political advocacy groups are wooing rural residents as well, convinced that the economy and security will prompt them to vote for Mr. Kerry.
The biggest legal controversy so far - over whether to count the votes of people who go to the wrong precinct - was resolved Thursday with a ruling by the secretary of state that their votes will not be counted if the election is not close.
While some officials are predicting a record turnout of 1.4 million voters, a razor-thin finish remains a distinct possibility. As the Iowa pollster Ann Selzer observed, "If you just look at how the campaigns are treating Iowa, our measly little seven electoral votes will matter and everything will be under scrutiny." — MICHAEL MOSS
Michigan
Michigan was not even supposed to be in the game at this point, and there is some argument about whether it really is.
As recently as a month ago, it had been scratched off of most political strategists' list of battleground states, expected to do once again what it had done in the last three presidential elections - go Democratic.
But then President Bush visited twice this week, with Vice President Dick Cheney due today and Senator John Kerry tentatively scheduling a Detroit appearance tomorrow.
"Michigan has really turned out to be the battleground state that we all hoped it would be," the political consultant Craig Ruff told The Detroit Free Press. Or maybe not.
"At this point, I don't think you would want to put Michigan on a list of true battleground states," said Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics, an influential newsletter. "Barring unforeseen occurrences in the final weekend, John Kerry should carry the state fairly easily."
Bush strategists say they would not have had the president back in Michigan if they did not see the chance to appeal to conservative blue-collar Democrats and wrest the state from Mr. Kerry.
Last summer, several polls were showing the state fairly evenly split between Bush and Kerry supporters, with a substantial block undecided. But by late August and early September, Mr. Kerry seemed to have assuaged the doubts of the state Democratic base and had crept ahead, a shift that accelerated drastically after the debates.
Then, on Oct. 21, The Detroit News published a tracking poll showing Mr. Bush ahead by 47 percent to 43 percent, with a large chunk of undecideds. Other polls also had the race tightening up, though none of them showed such a Bush lead.
It was enough, however, to embolden the Bush campaign to refocus on Michigan.
On Friday, The Detroit News published a fresh installment of the poll that had started it all, and it showed Mr. Kerry handily ahead again - 46 percent to 40 percent, with 11 percent still undecided. And the deeper one looked into the poll results, the better the news was for Mr. Kerry, who won every demographic group except those over 70.
Al Gore won Michigan four years ago by 217,279 votes, and Mr. Kerry has enjoyed the support of Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat popular with independents, who make up about a fifth of the population.
The biggest cluster of Michigan's Democrats is in the Detroit metropolitan area, though that city's political clout has waned in recent decades as the city has shrunk, now accounting for only 7 percent of the state's population.
Outside Detroit, in southwestern and northern Michigan, Republicans dominate.
"Michigan is a state that, depending on the political circumstances, could easily turn Republican again," Mr. Ballenger said. "But this year? I don't think so." — RICK LYMAN
Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 30 - In a state that prides itself on being different, Democrats are starting to hear two words that many of them have been trying hard to forget: Ralph Nader.
Most polls show the two main presidential candidates running almost even in Minnesota, but when Mr. Nader's name is added to the mix, President Bush has a modest advantage over Senator John Kerry.
Minnesotans have a history of sympathy for independent and third-party candidates. With the state so closely divided, votes for Mr. Nader and other candidates could swing its 10 electoral votes to the Republicans.
Minnesota is a media center for the crucial region including Iowa and Wisconsin, and presidential candidates have been regular visitors. In the last week, both major-party candidates and both of their running mates have been here. So has Mr. Nader.
Surrogate campaigners have also been blanketing the state. Mr. Kerry may have the star-power edge, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher, Carole King and Garrison Keillor all appearing on his behalf in recent days. Republicans have had to be satisfied with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Senator Bill Frist and Mr. Bush's daughters.
Former Gov. Jesse Ventura, the state's best-known political independent, has broken his silence on the race with several speeches endorsing Mr. Kerry.
The factor that most strongly favors Republicans here is the growth of population in outer suburbs, where they are traditionally strong. Voting rolls in cities, close-in suburbs and the Iron Range, where Democrats hold an edge, have not grown as fast and in some cases have actually shrunk.
Minnesotans have voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1976. If that happens again this year, analysts say, it may be because of three factors.
First is the Iraq war, which seemed to be equally beneficial to both candidates until the last few days. Debate over the missing cache of explosives at a depot near Baghdad has focused more attention on the issue. A second new factor here is the emergence of ethnic groups that are changing this state's complexion. The most politically active are the Hmong from Southeast Asia, who tend to vote Democratic.
Finally, in a state where people pride themselves on courtesy, respect and other qualities that they call "Minnesota Nice," the stridency of the campaign has grated on many voters. Some believe this could hurt Mr. Bush because of expectations that the incumbent should act more "presidential."
"Hard slamming and negative campaigning doesn't play well here," said Wyman Spano, an editor of the newsletter Politics in Minnesota. "Put that together with the explosives thing, and I see the race trending for Kerry. This state is moving in a generally Republican direction, but I think there will be a very high turnout. If there is, that will give Kerry the margin he needs." — STEPHEN KINZER
Nevada
LAS VEGAS, Oct. 30 - Amid persistent complaints of voting fraud, including charges that Democrats' registration forms were discarded by Republican-financed registrars, voters in Nevada went to the polls in record numbers during a two-week early-voting period that ended Friday.
Representatives of the major parties kept a close eye on how many of their members had voted, seeing the turnout as a sign of how their candidates were doing.
With the state's five electoral votes in play, nothing was being left to chance. On Friday afternoon, former President Bill Clinton, as part of his effort since undergoing heart surgery to help Senator John Kerry, spoke at the Clark County Government Center here.
Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to visit Reno, in northern Nevada, on Monday, for his seventh campaign trip to the state. Reno and surrounding Washoe County have traditionally leaned Republican, and Mr. Cheney's trip may indicate his party's concern about holding onto support there.
Mr. Kerry has been to the state seven times, most recently on Tuesday. President Bush has visited four times.
Elections officials predict that about 400,000 early and absentee ballots will have been cast in Nevada, and that another 400,000 voters will cast ballots Election Day.
With several hours of early voting still to go on Friday, spokesmen for both parties said they took comfort in the numbers.
"They look terrific for us," said Sean Smith, who works for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in Nevada. "The Democrats are outvoting Republicans by a sliver, but Democrats have never outvoted Republicans in Nevada. We're very encouraged."
Chris Carr, executive director of the state Republican Party, said the party's strength lay in rural areas, where most people would not vote until Tuesday, and not here in Clark County, where much of the Democratic bump was being felt.
In a Research 2000 poll conducted a week and a half ago for The Reno Gazette-Journal, Mr. Bush led Mr. Kerry 49 percent to 47 percent, a difference that fell within the poll's margin of sampling error of four percentage points.
Both parties have worked to register new voters, with some Republicans drawing particularly strong allegations of fraud. They include charges that workers for at least one organization, Voters Outreach of America, financed by the Republican National Committee, had discarded voter registration forms filed by Democratic voters.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Dean Heller said that an investigation had found no evidence of organized fraud, although he said there had been some instances in which "some of the individuals involved in collecting voter registrations were forging documents with fictitious names and addresses for personal gain." — NICK MADIGAN
New Hampshire
New Hampshire used to be reliably Republican when it came to presidential elections. Now it is reliably unreliable.
With a large influx into southern New Hampshire of people from Massachusetts and elsewhere, the state's block of independent voters has grown steadily. Bill Clinton won there in 1992 and 1996, and many voters now are ticket splitters, fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
In 2000, George W. Bush lost the Republican primary to John McCain, then eked out a victory in the general election, winning by just 7,211 votes. Ralph Nader, who garnered 22,000 votes, was a decisive factor in Al Gore's loss. Republicans and Democrats here like to say that if Mr. Gore had managed to capture the state, the electoral dispute in Florida would have been irrelevant.
This time, polls are showing a slight edge for Senator John Kerry, but veteran political observers warn against taking those numbers too seriously.
"It's still a Republican-leaning state, so it's tough to tell," said Dick Bennett, president of the American Research Group, a polling group in Manchester.
New Hampshire, being a neighbor of Massachusetts, knows Mr. Kerry better than some other parts of the country, a fact that is a mixed blessing, said Jeanne Shaheen, the former governor of New Hampshire and a national chairwoman of the Kerry campaign. "The negative part of that is that New Hampshire and Massachusetts have historically had a rivalry," Ms. Shaheen said.
But Mr. Bush, as his 2000 showing suggests, has not been a particular favorite here, so independents are not expected to shower him with support.
Mr. Bush held rallies on Friday in Manchester and Portsmouth, major cities in the populous southern tier of the state. Mr. Kerry will be at a rally Sunday in Manchester.
But officials of both parties say any successes on Election Day will have their roots in campaign efforts that began much earlier than usual.
"We knew it was absolutely going to be this close again," said Jayne Millerick, chairwoman of the state Republican Party. "Whereas before we might have done these activities a couple of months before the election - knocking on doors, sending welcome card to new homeowners, making telephone calls - we started doing them several months before."
Ms. Millerick said, "Our-get-out-the-vote efforts are probably five or six times larger than usual," with several thousand volunteers, who, among other things, will offer voters rides to polling places and knock on doors on Election Day to remind people to vote. Democrats have planned a large get-out-the-vote effort as well.
In her home county, Strafford, Ms. Shaheen said, nearly 300 volunteers turned out for a recent get-out-the-vote organizing meeting, "more people than I've ever seen." — PAM BELLUCK
New Mexico
When asked to sum up the mood of New Mexico in these final days before Election Day, Denise Lamb, the director of elections for the state, put it this way: "The voters are jittery, the lawyers are hostile and the election workers are more exhausted than they've ever been."
Campaign fatigue is settling over a state that, by now, has endured a level of political courtship - from both the Bush and Kerry campaigns - that seems incommensurate with its modest electoral dowry of five. Legions of party faithful have poured into the state over the last eight months in an effort to rally and to sway New Mexico's mixture of Hispanic, white and American Indian voters with television commercials, billboards, telephone calls, celebrity appearances, door-to-door canvassing and stump speeches. Senator John Kerry rolled through Las Cruces last Saturday, followed by President Bush, who came to Alamogordo on Sunday. Not to be outdone, Mr. Kerry returned on Tuesday, addressing crowds at Albuquerque's Civic Plaza.
Part of the interest in New Mexico can be attributed to the state's large Hispanic population - 42 percent of its 1.8 million people.
"Necesito su voto," Mr. Kerry told crowds here, in awkward Spanish, on Tuesday: "Necesito su ayuda. I need your vote. I need your help."
But the simpler truth is this: In an election where every electoral vote may be crucial, both parties see in New Mexico a population up for grabs.
That point is not immediately apparent, given that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost 200,000. But New Mexico's voting population is fiercely independent, with complex allegiances tied up not just in race or ethnicity but also in finer splinters of heritage, faith and geography.
Some Hispanics proudly trace their roots to 17th-century Spanish conquistadors, for instance, while others to more recent arrivals from Latin America. The smaller towns of the north are traditional Democratic strongholds, while the oil patches of the southeast - sometimes called Little Texas - tend to be Republican.
But a stubborn 15 percent of registered voters indicate no party preference. Four years ago, Al Gore won the state by just 366 votes. This year, the polls have undulated only slightly, but the gap has almost never exceeded the margin of error.
And the campaigns know it. "Ads are still saturating the airwaves," said Brian Sanderoff of Research and Polling Inc. of Albuquerque. "It's going to go down to the wire." — TOM ZELLER
Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 30 - Four years ago, Ohio was not in play in the presidential sweepstakes, seeming so solidly Republican that Vice President Al Gore's campaign pulled up stakes weeks before Election Day.
This year, it matters. On Tuesday, millions of Ohioans will go to the polls convinced their votes could decide the entire race. And they might be right.
The state and its 20 electoral votes are nothing short of crucial for both President Bush and Senator John Kerry, and polls show the race to be airtight. For Mr. Bush, no Republican has ever won a presidential election without carrying Ohio. For Mr. Kerry, Ohio may represent the best chance to take a major state away from Mr. Bush's 2000 victory column, analysts say.
The reason comes down to simple economics: Ohio, where Republicans dominate every branch of state government, is flirting with a Democratic candidate because the state has been ravaged by job losses - more than 200,000 since Mr. Bush took office. Without those layoffs, strategists in both major parties agree, Mr. Bush would probably be comfortably ahead.
Results of most polls are within the margin of error, and all sides agree the race is too close to call - close enough that the two parties have marshaled battalions of lawyers both to watch for Election Day fraud or intimidation and to prepare post-election litigation in case the margin is razor-thin. (Ohio law requires an automatic recount if the margin is less than 0.25 percent).
Already, the two parties have been tying each other up in legal knots. The Republicans have challenged 35,000 new registrations, but Democrats succeeded in having a federal judge block most of the challenges.
The Republicans also plan to have more than 3,600 people ready to challenge voters inside polling places on Election Day. Democrats in two counties have asked federal judges to prohibit those challenges, and rulings are expected by Monday.
With the election so close and so much at stake, the candidates have been crisscrossing the state in recent weeks. Mr. Kerry was in Ohio seven times this month, with plans to close his campaign with a rally in Cleveland on Monday. Mr. Bush has been here five times, with plans to spend Sunday and Monday in Cincinnati.
Both parties have also mounted what they contend are their largest get-out-the-vote operations in their histories here. For Republicans, that has meant mustering 80,000 volunteers, nearly four times what they had in 2000. Their focus will be on Republican strongholds in the rural west, around Cincinnati and in the Columbus suburbs.
Democrats and allied groups like Americans Coming Together say they have more than 100,000 volunteers working to turn out voters in the cities and throughout the industrial northeast. — JAMES DAO
Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 30 - Senator John Kerry's sharpened criticisms of the war in Iraq helped tilt Pennsylvania polls toward him in the last several weeks - one had him up by 8 points - and some Democrats started whispering that Mr. Bush had ceded the state's 21 Electoral College votes.
But recent polls have put the race at a tie again; one gave Mr. Bush a slight lead. And with two visits to the state in the last week, the president has made clear that he has no intention of giving up the fight.
Mr. Kerry himself has visited Pennsylvania four times in October alone, including one stop for a rousing rally alongside former President Bill Clinton, who was making his first campaign appearance after quadruple bypass surgery.
Polls have consistently shown that domestic security is the deciding issue for the biggest chunk of voters in this state - 26 percent, according to the latest Keystone Poll, this week- and that Mr. Bush wins on that score. But Mr. Kerry wins on the next two biggest issues: the economy and Iraq.
A record surge in new voter registrations this year has given the Democrats an edge of about 500,000 voters; 260,000 new Democrats have registered since the primary in April, and 156,000 new Republicans.
Mr. Kerry is expected to win Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Mr. Bush is counting on the more rural center of the state. The true battlegrounds are the four suburban counties outside Philadelphia, where voters tend to register Republican but where moderates have tilted the state toward Democrats in presidential races since 1988, when Mr. Bush's father won there and statewide.
In these suburbs, Mr. Bush has tried to appeal to voters on issues like medical malpractice, as many obstetricians have left the state in recent years. Mr. Kerry has sought to appeal to moderates with issues like stem cell research and abortion rights.
Another crucial area is the southwest, where the economy has long been tied to big steel. Since the New Deal these counties have been staunchly Democratic. But many in this blue-collar region are culturally conservative.
But Republicans and Democrats alike say the biggest tangles on Election Day will be challenges to the registrations of all the new voters, especially in Philadelphia. Democrats criticized John Perzel, the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House, for saying that his strategy was to keep the numbers down in Philadelphia. He insisted that did not mean challenging minority voters, as the Democrats suggested, but encouraging Republicans to vote. — KATE ZERNIKE
Wisconsin
MILWAUKEE, Oct. 30 - Mike Wittenwyler is a Democratic lawyer who specializes in campaign finance, and he spends every day talking to people involved in Wisconsin politics. "The bottom line," Mr. Wittenwyler said this week, "is that I can't get a sense from the people who should know what they think is going to happen here on Tuesday. And that tells me it's going to come down to a battle of the get-out-the-vote operations."
President Bush has visited Wisconsin 12 times since the primaries. Senator John Kerry has been here 11 times. Their running mates have been here six times each. And on Friday, both campaigns announced that their presidential candidates would hold rallies in downtown Milwaukee on Monday.
"It's gotten to the point where these guys are going to places so out of the way that even a U.S. Senate candidate wouldn't visit them," said Brady Williamson, a Democratic lawyer who specializes in election law.
Television advertising is incessant and increasingly nasty. Radio, said Ken Goldstein, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, "is even worse."
Passions are so high and the race seems so close that Wisconsin officials are beginning to worry that the state will wake up Wednesday as the Florida of 2004 - a postelection battleground of lawyers and mudslinging.
As recently as three weeks ago, with polls showing Mr. Bush holding a small but steady lead over Mr. Kerry, Republican strategists frequently cited Wisconsin as the party's best chance at winning a swing state that went to the Democrats in 2000, when Al Gore won its 10 electoral votes by just 5,700 votes. Two polls this week, though, showed Mr. Kerry holding a one- or two-point lead.
The main battle is in the state's southeast corner, where the bulk of the population resides. Milwaukee, by far the largest city, often votes 65 percent or more Democratic, especially in its black and Hispanic neighborhoods. But the ring of counties around the city vote even more overwhelmingly Republican, sometimes 70 percent or more.
Dane County, to the west, is home to Madison and is overwhelmingly Democratic.
Taken together, these areas tend to cancel one another out, leaving it to the rest of the state, largely rural, to break the tie.
The two critical swing areas are in far western counties like La Crosse, Eau Claire and St. Croix, an area that has largely become bedroom communities for Minneapolis-St. Paul, and in the Fox River Valley, stretching southwest from Green Bay to Winnebago County.
La Crosse, which Mr. Bush visited Tuesday, went narrowly Democratic in 2000. Republicans then scolded themselves for paying too little attention to rural Wisconsin.
The Fox River Valley went Republican in 2000, but barely, and a strong turnout in normally Democratic Green Bay could shift it back into Democratic hands this year.
Turnout is always strong in Wisconsin - 58 percent in 1996 and 69 percent in 2000 - partly because it is one of a handful of states that allow people to register at their polling site on Election Day. That flexibility has led both parties to have armies of lawyers ready to monitor the voting for shenanigans. — RICK LYMAN
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Focus Narrowing as Close Contest Nears Finish LineBy R. W. APPLE Jr.
LEVELAND, Oct. 30 - The 2004 presidential campaign is ending as it began, focused with blazing intensity on no more than a dozen hard-fought states, with the tinglingly close contest between President Bush and Senator John Kerry depending most, both parties agree, on three pivotal states: Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The candidates have invested tens of millions of dollars on advertising there, deployed armies of field workers and spent hundreds of hours on the stump, including visits in the race's final weekend. With the furor over a new Osama bin Laden tape filtering through the campaigns, both men crossed through Midwestern swing states on Saturday and are to appear in Florida on Sunday.
As a result, cities like Orlando, Pittsburgh and Columbus, and their suburbs, have watched the struggle from close range while Chicago, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles have squinted at it from bleacher seats.
In the end, the outcome is likely to be decided by what political pros call "the ground war": the effort by both parties to get every supporter to the polls on Tuesday. Although there are almost limitless ways either candidate could reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to win, whoever wins two of the big three states would have an advantage that would be difficult to overcome.
With only 72 hours until the polls begin opening, Pennsylvania, with 21 electoral votes, appeared to be trending Mr. Kerry's way, with most but not all opinion surveys showing him ahead by about three percentage points. Mr. Bush has failed to dent the four suburban Philadelphia counties, whose liberal attitudes on social issues like abortion and gun control have overshadowed their economic conservatism.
Florida, with 27 electoral votes, was agonizingly close four years ago, with far-reaching consequences, and it is the hardest of the big states to read this year. If anyone holds an advantage, it is probably Mr. Bush, if only because of the influence of his brother Jeb, the governor. But the Democrats, energized by the sting of their agonizing defeat in 2000, seem to be benefiting more from the outpouring of early voters.
Here in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes, Mr. Kerry has capitalized on job losses during the Bush administration. He seems to hold a tenuous lead as volunteers from both parties pour into the state, often seen as a microcosm of the nation, to get out the vote. He has taken to carrying a lucky buckeye in his pocket. No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio, and the state has gone with the winner in all but two elections since 1892.
"It's as close as it could conceivably be," said Eric Rademacher, who directs the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll. "Closer than I've ever seen before. Close here and several other states. We may not know the outcome until mid-November."
Searching for ways to salvage a victory even if beaten in the big shows, both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush belatedly began wooing the voters of Michigan (17 electoral votes). A win there could very nearly make up for a loss in Ohio. They have also intensified their pursuit of a troika of smaller Midwestern states that Al Gore won by narrow margins in 2000: Minnesota and Wisconsin (10 each) and Iowa (7). All three are treacherously close this time, with Ralph Nader a real threat to Mr. Kerry in Minnesota, a state notably fond of third-party candidates.
Colorado (9), New Mexico and Nevada (5 each) and New Hampshire (4) are all in play as well, with the potential of contributing to a winning equation.
A series of hairbreadth finishes could plunge the nation into treacherous straits, with lawsuits in multiple states, a far more complex prospect than the legal contest in 2000, which was confined to Florida. Several suits have already been filed. But the huge numbers of newly registered voters could confound all the forecasts.
Battleground-state previews by New York Times reporters follow.
Arkansas
LITTLE ROCK, Oct. 30 - Almost alone in the South, Arkansas has traditionally been a place where Democrats can win federal office. Even though President Bush carried the state in 2000 by five percentage points, both of its senators and all but one of its House members are Democrats.
"Until relatively recently Arkansas didn't have as big an influx of people from other parts of the country," said Andrew Dowdle, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, adding that white voters had not abandoned the Democratic Party as they had in other parts of the region. "Without the battle over race and without new voters coming in, the Republican Party never really had a chance to get the dominance that it got in some of the other states," Dr. Dowdle said.
But as more Republican voters have moved in, that balance has been shifting. Voters in the state, which Democrats refer to as a Southern oasis and Republicans label a place of weakening entrenchment, tend to reflect the more economically and socially conservative values espoused by Mr. Bush.
Several voters supporting Mr. Bush said they liked his commitment to low taxes and his opposition to abortion. Consultants and campaign officials say security is the most important issue in the state, which would also tend to help Mr. Bush, because many polls suggest most voters have more confidence in his ability to keep the country safe.
At the same time, aides to Senator John Kerry are seeing renewed opportunity, with a recent poll showing that he had pulled even with Mr. Bush. And with many Arkansans fighting in Iraq, political experts say, there has been intense news coverage of the rising casualties. That, coupled with mixed economic news and what polls suggested were strong debate performances, could be working to Mr. Kerry's advantage, they say.
Neither candidate has visited since the summer, but radio and television have suddenly been flooded with advertisements as the Republicans move to counter a late push by the Democrats. And the Kerry campaign is hoping that a visit by former President Bill Clinton on Sunday will spur turnout among core Democratic voters.
Indeed, each campaign says that turnout holds the key to victory. "Everybody says, 'Well, who's going to carry Arkansas?' " said Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is the state chairman of the Bush campaign. "The answer is whoever gets their voters out." — DIANE CARDWELL
Colorado
DENVER, Oct. 30 - The traditional recipe for cooking up a swing state does not fit Colorado.
There are no old urban manufacturing hubs stripped of blue-collar jobs as in Ohio or Wisconsin, no mix of immigrants and retirees as in Florida. Rural and suburban Republicans have securely dominated the party registration lists for decades, and unaffiliated voters tend to break to the right.
The state went for Bill Clinton in 1992 - but only because Ross Perot did so well.
Judging by the history and the numbers, political analysts say the odds have to favor President Bush on Tuesday despite the slipping of his lead. Several recent polls have Mr. Bush ahead by six percentage points, about half the margin it was a month ago.
What Mr. Kerry must base his hopes on in Colorado are the cumulative differences between this year and all others before it. Many of those differences are cryptic.
More than 262,000 new voters have registered since January, and Democrats estimate that about 75,000 of them are Hispanics, who make up a sixth of the state's population and who are expected to come out in record numbers for the Democratic candidate for the open United States Senate seat, Attorney General Ken Salazar.
Mr. Salazar, Colorado's only Hispanic statewide office holder, has led in most polls over his Republican rival, the beer magnate Peter H. Coors, but whether Mr. Salazar's popularity can extend to help Mr. Kerry is uncertain, analysts say.
As in most states, the war in Iraq and the economy preoccupy voters, but there are significant differences between Colorado and some other swing states on those points.
First, the military presence here is enormous, in installations like Fort Carson, the United States Air Force Academy and Norad, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. And the Vietnam generation - however that cuts in this election - is strongly represented. A higher proportion of Colorado's military veterans served during the Vietnam War than any state's except Alaska, according to the Census Bureau.
The economy, which boomed in the 1990's during the dot-com bubble, has sputtered for years. In the first half of this year, Colorado had the fastest rate of increase in consumer bankruptcies in the nation, according to Lundquist Consulting Inc., which tracks bankruptcy trends.
If Mr. Kerry does win here, it will not be a result of a final media blitz. His campaign cut much of its television advertising, at least in the Denver market, on Monday. But the Bush campaign is still pushing hard, station managers said. Mr. Bush has visited the state twice in just the last month, and Mr. Kerry has come to Colorado six times during the campaign. — KIRK JOHNSON
Florida
MIAMI, Oct. 30 - Florida remains intensely contested, with President Bush and Senator John Kerry drawing nearly equal support, both candidates still dashing through the state and wary voters gripped by anxiety.
About 1.5 million early and absentee votes have already been cast, suggesting that turnout among the 10.3 million registered voters could outpace that in 2000. Newspaper analyses have shown far more Democrats than Republicans casting early votes in person, many of them African-American.
The Kerry campaign has seized on residual anger from the state's recount in 2000, which gave Mr. Bush a victory margin of 537 votes. Democratic lawyers are pouring into the state to watch for voter intimidation or disenfranchisement. Republicans, meanwhile, say they may challenge the eligibility of some Democratic voters.
Polls show Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry within a few percentage points in the state, though one, by The Los Angeles Times, showed Mr. Bush with an eight-point lead.
Mr. Bush benefits from Florida's economy, which has outperformed the nation's as a whole, and from the state's large military population, which appears to be leaning in his direction. He also has the advantage of his brother, the popular Gov. Jeb Bush, who has put aside his state duties for the last days of the campaign to focus on helping the president win Florida's 27 electoral votes.
But political strategists say Mr. Kerry could benefit from 1.5 million new voters, many of whom are independents and likely to vote Democratic. Many are Hispanic immigrants, including Cubans, who usually vote Republican but may shift to Mr. Kerry out of anger over Mr. Bush's Cuba policy.
Governor Bush will appear with the president at rallies in Miami, Gainesville and Tampa on Sunday, while Mr. Kerry, who made three stops here on Friday, will return Sunday for an event in Tampa. Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush's wife, Laura, and their twin daughters traveled the state last week, too, while former President Bill Clinton came on behalf of Mr. Kerry.
The Republicans have enlisted 90,000 volunteers to help make calls, knock on doors and drive voters to the polls. Democrats are largely leaving such work to independent groups like America Coming Together.
Civil rights groups are worried about possible challenges of voter eligibility, saying Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican appointee of Governor Bush, has not done enough to prevent frivolous challenges.
Rights groups and Democratic politicians waged unsuccessful legal battles seeking printed receipts for voters who use touch-screen voting machines and fighting the disqualification of new voters who left information off their registration forms. — ABBY GOODNOUGH
Iowa
CEDAR RAPIDS, Oct. 30 - The state that propelled Senator John Kerry's presidential bid with a stunning victory in the caucuses last winter has all but lost its famed composure in recent days, rattled by the intensity with which Mr. Kerry and President Bush are now trying to win its seven electoral votes.
On Friday, under armed guard and police escort with flashing lights, the election auditor of Linn County, Linda Langenberg, moved 30,000 ballots already completed by early voters to the Cedar Rapids police headquarters for safekeeping until they are counted on Election Day. "Everyone is so worried," she explained. "We're trying to do everything we can to protect their ballots."
Iowa has backed Democrats for president since 1988, but former Vice President Al Gore won the state by just 4,000 votes in 2000 and recent polls show the presidential contest here virtually deadlocked.
The narrow contest has brought the state numerous last-minute visits by both major candidates and their high-profile supporters: former New York mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Edward I. Koch for Mr. Bush; the rock star Jon Bon Jovi for Mr. Kerry.
With their caucuses, Iowans are used to such national attention and take their voting seriously. In a measure of their devotion to voting, Ordinance 49.105 lets election officials have unruly voters arrested - but only after they get a chance to cast their ballots.
Iowa is a state with lots of small towns that are shrinking and cities that are maintaining their own but are being outdistanced by robust suburban areas with white-collar jobs like the insurance industry. There are extremely liberal enclaves in Iowa City and Ames. But Iowa also has a very strong fundamentalist Christian community that became very political in the 1980's.
"When you add it all up, the race is now 49 to 49 because these people, like the rest of the country, are in two pretty evenly divided political camps," said Steffen W. Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University.
Republican officials say they think they can hand Iowa to Mr. Bush through the state's farmers, and they are focusing on motivating rural voters. Democrats and their allied political advocacy groups are wooing rural residents as well, convinced that the economy and security will prompt them to vote for Mr. Kerry.
The biggest legal controversy so far - over whether to count the votes of people who go to the wrong precinct - was resolved Thursday with a ruling by the secretary of state that their votes will not be counted if the election is not close.
While some officials are predicting a record turnout of 1.4 million voters, a razor-thin finish remains a distinct possibility. As the Iowa pollster Ann Selzer observed, "If you just look at how the campaigns are treating Iowa, our measly little seven electoral votes will matter and everything will be under scrutiny." — MICHAEL MOSS
Michigan
Michigan was not even supposed to be in the game at this point, and there is some argument about whether it really is.
As recently as a month ago, it had been scratched off of most political strategists' list of battleground states, expected to do once again what it had done in the last three presidential elections - go Democratic.
But then President Bush visited twice this week, with Vice President Dick Cheney due today and Senator John Kerry tentatively scheduling a Detroit appearance tomorrow.
"Michigan has really turned out to be the battleground state that we all hoped it would be," the political consultant Craig Ruff told The Detroit Free Press. Or maybe not.
"At this point, I don't think you would want to put Michigan on a list of true battleground states," said Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics, an influential newsletter. "Barring unforeseen occurrences in the final weekend, John Kerry should carry the state fairly easily."
Bush strategists say they would not have had the president back in Michigan if they did not see the chance to appeal to conservative blue-collar Democrats and wrest the state from Mr. Kerry.
Last summer, several polls were showing the state fairly evenly split between Bush and Kerry supporters, with a substantial block undecided. But by late August and early September, Mr. Kerry seemed to have assuaged the doubts of the state Democratic base and had crept ahead, a shift that accelerated drastically after the debates.
Then, on Oct. 21, The Detroit News published a tracking poll showing Mr. Bush ahead by 47 percent to 43 percent, with a large chunk of undecideds. Other polls also had the race tightening up, though none of them showed such a Bush lead.
It was enough, however, to embolden the Bush campaign to refocus on Michigan.
On Friday, The Detroit News published a fresh installment of the poll that had started it all, and it showed Mr. Kerry handily ahead again - 46 percent to 40 percent, with 11 percent still undecided. And the deeper one looked into the poll results, the better the news was for Mr. Kerry, who won every demographic group except those over 70.
Al Gore won Michigan four years ago by 217,279 votes, and Mr. Kerry has enjoyed the support of Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat popular with independents, who make up about a fifth of the population.
The biggest cluster of Michigan's Democrats is in the Detroit metropolitan area, though that city's political clout has waned in recent decades as the city has shrunk, now accounting for only 7 percent of the state's population.
Outside Detroit, in southwestern and northern Michigan, Republicans dominate.
"Michigan is a state that, depending on the political circumstances, could easily turn Republican again," Mr. Ballenger said. "But this year? I don't think so." — RICK LYMAN
Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 30 - In a state that prides itself on being different, Democrats are starting to hear two words that many of them have been trying hard to forget: Ralph Nader.
Most polls show the two main presidential candidates running almost even in Minnesota, but when Mr. Nader's name is added to the mix, President Bush has a modest advantage over Senator John Kerry.
Minnesotans have a history of sympathy for independent and third-party candidates. With the state so closely divided, votes for Mr. Nader and other candidates could swing its 10 electoral votes to the Republicans.
Minnesota is a media center for the crucial region including Iowa and Wisconsin, and presidential candidates have been regular visitors. In the last week, both major-party candidates and both of their running mates have been here. So has Mr. Nader.
Surrogate campaigners have also been blanketing the state. Mr. Kerry may have the star-power edge, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher, Carole King and Garrison Keillor all appearing on his behalf in recent days. Republicans have had to be satisfied with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Senator Bill Frist and Mr. Bush's daughters.
Former Gov. Jesse Ventura, the state's best-known political independent, has broken his silence on the race with several speeches endorsing Mr. Kerry.
The factor that most strongly favors Republicans here is the growth of population in outer suburbs, where they are traditionally strong. Voting rolls in cities, close-in suburbs and the Iron Range, where Democrats hold an edge, have not grown as fast and in some cases have actually shrunk.
Minnesotans have voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1976. If that happens again this year, analysts say, it may be because of three factors.
First is the Iraq war, which seemed to be equally beneficial to both candidates until the last few days. Debate over the missing cache of explosives at a depot near Baghdad has focused more attention on the issue. A second new factor here is the emergence of ethnic groups that are changing this state's complexion. The most politically active are the Hmong from Southeast Asia, who tend to vote Democratic.
Finally, in a state where people pride themselves on courtesy, respect and other qualities that they call "Minnesota Nice," the stridency of the campaign has grated on many voters. Some believe this could hurt Mr. Bush because of expectations that the incumbent should act more "presidential."
"Hard slamming and negative campaigning doesn't play well here," said Wyman Spano, an editor of the newsletter Politics in Minnesota. "Put that together with the explosives thing, and I see the race trending for Kerry. This state is moving in a generally Republican direction, but I think there will be a very high turnout. If there is, that will give Kerry the margin he needs." — STEPHEN KINZER
Nevada
LAS VEGAS, Oct. 30 - Amid persistent complaints of voting fraud, including charges that Democrats' registration forms were discarded by Republican-financed registrars, voters in Nevada went to the polls in record numbers during a two-week early-voting period that ended Friday.
Representatives of the major parties kept a close eye on how many of their members had voted, seeing the turnout as a sign of how their candidates were doing.
With the state's five electoral votes in play, nothing was being left to chance. On Friday afternoon, former President Bill Clinton, as part of his effort since undergoing heart surgery to help Senator John Kerry, spoke at the Clark County Government Center here.
Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to visit Reno, in northern Nevada, on Monday, for his seventh campaign trip to the state. Reno and surrounding Washoe County have traditionally leaned Republican, and Mr. Cheney's trip may indicate his party's concern about holding onto support there.
Mr. Kerry has been to the state seven times, most recently on Tuesday. President Bush has visited four times.
Elections officials predict that about 400,000 early and absentee ballots will have been cast in Nevada, and that another 400,000 voters will cast ballots Election Day.
With several hours of early voting still to go on Friday, spokesmen for both parties said they took comfort in the numbers.
"They look terrific for us," said Sean Smith, who works for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in Nevada. "The Democrats are outvoting Republicans by a sliver, but Democrats have never outvoted Republicans in Nevada. We're very encouraged."
Chris Carr, executive director of the state Republican Party, said the party's strength lay in rural areas, where most people would not vote until Tuesday, and not here in Clark County, where much of the Democratic bump was being felt.
In a Research 2000 poll conducted a week and a half ago for The Reno Gazette-Journal, Mr. Bush led Mr. Kerry 49 percent to 47 percent, a difference that fell within the poll's margin of sampling error of four percentage points.
Both parties have worked to register new voters, with some Republicans drawing particularly strong allegations of fraud. They include charges that workers for at least one organization, Voters Outreach of America, financed by the Republican National Committee, had discarded voter registration forms filed by Democratic voters.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Dean Heller said that an investigation had found no evidence of organized fraud, although he said there had been some instances in which "some of the individuals involved in collecting voter registrations were forging documents with fictitious names and addresses for personal gain." — NICK MADIGAN
New Hampshire
New Hampshire used to be reliably Republican when it came to presidential elections. Now it is reliably unreliable.
With a large influx into southern New Hampshire of people from Massachusetts and elsewhere, the state's block of independent voters has grown steadily. Bill Clinton won there in 1992 and 1996, and many voters now are ticket splitters, fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
In 2000, George W. Bush lost the Republican primary to John McCain, then eked out a victory in the general election, winning by just 7,211 votes. Ralph Nader, who garnered 22,000 votes, was a decisive factor in Al Gore's loss. Republicans and Democrats here like to say that if Mr. Gore had managed to capture the state, the electoral dispute in Florida would have been irrelevant.
This time, polls are showing a slight edge for Senator John Kerry, but veteran political observers warn against taking those numbers too seriously.
"It's still a Republican-leaning state, so it's tough to tell," said Dick Bennett, president of the American Research Group, a polling group in Manchester.
New Hampshire, being a neighbor of Massachusetts, knows Mr. Kerry better than some other parts of the country, a fact that is a mixed blessing, said Jeanne Shaheen, the former governor of New Hampshire and a national chairwoman of the Kerry campaign. "The negative part of that is that New Hampshire and Massachusetts have historically had a rivalry," Ms. Shaheen said.
But Mr. Bush, as his 2000 showing suggests, has not been a particular favorite here, so independents are not expected to shower him with support.
Mr. Bush held rallies on Friday in Manchester and Portsmouth, major cities in the populous southern tier of the state. Mr. Kerry will be at a rally Sunday in Manchester.
But officials of both parties say any successes on Election Day will have their roots in campaign efforts that began much earlier than usual.
"We knew it was absolutely going to be this close again," said Jayne Millerick, chairwoman of the state Republican Party. "Whereas before we might have done these activities a couple of months before the election - knocking on doors, sending welcome card to new homeowners, making telephone calls - we started doing them several months before."
Ms. Millerick said, "Our-get-out-the-vote efforts are probably five or six times larger than usual," with several thousand volunteers, who, among other things, will offer voters rides to polling places and knock on doors on Election Day to remind people to vote. Democrats have planned a large get-out-the-vote effort as well.
In her home county, Strafford, Ms. Shaheen said, nearly 300 volunteers turned out for a recent get-out-the-vote organizing meeting, "more people than I've ever seen." — PAM BELLUCK
New Mexico
When asked to sum up the mood of New Mexico in these final days before Election Day, Denise Lamb, the director of elections for the state, put it this way: "The voters are jittery, the lawyers are hostile and the election workers are more exhausted than they've ever been."
Campaign fatigue is settling over a state that, by now, has endured a level of political courtship - from both the Bush and Kerry campaigns - that seems incommensurate with its modest electoral dowry of five. Legions of party faithful have poured into the state over the last eight months in an effort to rally and to sway New Mexico's mixture of Hispanic, white and American Indian voters with television commercials, billboards, telephone calls, celebrity appearances, door-to-door canvassing and stump speeches. Senator John Kerry rolled through Las Cruces last Saturday, followed by President Bush, who came to Alamogordo on Sunday. Not to be outdone, Mr. Kerry returned on Tuesday, addressing crowds at Albuquerque's Civic Plaza.
Part of the interest in New Mexico can be attributed to the state's large Hispanic population - 42 percent of its 1.8 million people.
"Necesito su voto," Mr. Kerry told crowds here, in awkward Spanish, on Tuesday: "Necesito su ayuda. I need your vote. I need your help."
But the simpler truth is this: In an election where every electoral vote may be crucial, both parties see in New Mexico a population up for grabs.
That point is not immediately apparent, given that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost 200,000. But New Mexico's voting population is fiercely independent, with complex allegiances tied up not just in race or ethnicity but also in finer splinters of heritage, faith and geography.
Some Hispanics proudly trace their roots to 17th-century Spanish conquistadors, for instance, while others to more recent arrivals from Latin America. The smaller towns of the north are traditional Democratic strongholds, while the oil patches of the southeast - sometimes called Little Texas - tend to be Republican.
But a stubborn 15 percent of registered voters indicate no party preference. Four years ago, Al Gore won the state by just 366 votes. This year, the polls have undulated only slightly, but the gap has almost never exceeded the margin of error.
And the campaigns know it. "Ads are still saturating the airwaves," said Brian Sanderoff of Research and Polling Inc. of Albuquerque. "It's going to go down to the wire." — TOM ZELLER
Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 30 - Four years ago, Ohio was not in play in the presidential sweepstakes, seeming so solidly Republican that Vice President Al Gore's campaign pulled up stakes weeks before Election Day.
This year, it matters. On Tuesday, millions of Ohioans will go to the polls convinced their votes could decide the entire race. And they might be right.
The state and its 20 electoral votes are nothing short of crucial for both President Bush and Senator John Kerry, and polls show the race to be airtight. For Mr. Bush, no Republican has ever won a presidential election without carrying Ohio. For Mr. Kerry, Ohio may represent the best chance to take a major state away from Mr. Bush's 2000 victory column, analysts say.
The reason comes down to simple economics: Ohio, where Republicans dominate every branch of state government, is flirting with a Democratic candidate because the state has been ravaged by job losses - more than 200,000 since Mr. Bush took office. Without those layoffs, strategists in both major parties agree, Mr. Bush would probably be comfortably ahead.
Results of most polls are within the margin of error, and all sides agree the race is too close to call - close enough that the two parties have marshaled battalions of lawyers both to watch for Election Day fraud or intimidation and to prepare post-election litigation in case the margin is razor-thin. (Ohio law requires an automatic recount if the margin is less than 0.25 percent).
Already, the two parties have been tying each other up in legal knots. The Republicans have challenged 35,000 new registrations, but Democrats succeeded in having a federal judge block most of the challenges.
The Republicans also plan to have more than 3,600 people ready to challenge voters inside polling places on Election Day. Democrats in two counties have asked federal judges to prohibit those challenges, and rulings are expected by Monday.
With the election so close and so much at stake, the candidates have been crisscrossing the state in recent weeks. Mr. Kerry was in Ohio seven times this month, with plans to close his campaign with a rally in Cleveland on Monday. Mr. Bush has been here five times, with plans to spend Sunday and Monday in Cincinnati.
Both parties have also mounted what they contend are their largest get-out-the-vote operations in their histories here. For Republicans, that has meant mustering 80,000 volunteers, nearly four times what they had in 2000. Their focus will be on Republican strongholds in the rural west, around Cincinnati and in the Columbus suburbs.
Democrats and allied groups like Americans Coming Together say they have more than 100,000 volunteers working to turn out voters in the cities and throughout the industrial northeast. — JAMES DAO
Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 30 - Senator John Kerry's sharpened criticisms of the war in Iraq helped tilt Pennsylvania polls toward him in the last several weeks - one had him up by 8 points - and some Democrats started whispering that Mr. Bush had ceded the state's 21 Electoral College votes.
But recent polls have put the race at a tie again; one gave Mr. Bush a slight lead. And with two visits to the state in the last week, the president has made clear that he has no intention of giving up the fight.
Mr. Kerry himself has visited Pennsylvania four times in October alone, including one stop for a rousing rally alongside former President Bill Clinton, who was making his first campaign appearance after quadruple bypass surgery.
Polls have consistently shown that domestic security is the deciding issue for the biggest chunk of voters in this state - 26 percent, according to the latest Keystone Poll, this week- and that Mr. Bush wins on that score. But Mr. Kerry wins on the next two biggest issues: the economy and Iraq.
A record surge in new voter registrations this year has given the Democrats an edge of about 500,000 voters; 260,000 new Democrats have registered since the primary in April, and 156,000 new Republicans.
Mr. Kerry is expected to win Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Mr. Bush is counting on the more rural center of the state. The true battlegrounds are the four suburban counties outside Philadelphia, where voters tend to register Republican but where moderates have tilted the state toward Democrats in presidential races since 1988, when Mr. Bush's father won there and statewide.
In these suburbs, Mr. Bush has tried to appeal to voters on issues like medical malpractice, as many obstetricians have left the state in recent years. Mr. Kerry has sought to appeal to moderates with issues like stem cell research and abortion rights.
Another crucial area is the southwest, where the economy has long been tied to big steel. Since the New Deal these counties have been staunchly Democratic. But many in this blue-collar region are culturally conservative.
But Republicans and Democrats alike say the biggest tangles on Election Day will be challenges to the registrations of all the new voters, especially in Philadelphia. Democrats criticized John Perzel, the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House, for saying that his strategy was to keep the numbers down in Philadelphia. He insisted that did not mean challenging minority voters, as the Democrats suggested, but encouraging Republicans to vote. — KATE ZERNIKE
Wisconsin
MILWAUKEE, Oct. 30 - Mike Wittenwyler is a Democratic lawyer who specializes in campaign finance, and he spends every day talking to people involved in Wisconsin politics. "The bottom line," Mr. Wittenwyler said this week, "is that I can't get a sense from the people who should know what they think is going to happen here on Tuesday. And that tells me it's going to come down to a battle of the get-out-the-vote operations."
President Bush has visited Wisconsin 12 times since the primaries. Senator John Kerry has been here 11 times. Their running mates have been here six times each. And on Friday, both campaigns announced that their presidential candidates would hold rallies in downtown Milwaukee on Monday.
"It's gotten to the point where these guys are going to places so out of the way that even a U.S. Senate candidate wouldn't visit them," said Brady Williamson, a Democratic lawyer who specializes in election law.
Television advertising is incessant and increasingly nasty. Radio, said Ken Goldstein, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, "is even worse."
Passions are so high and the race seems so close that Wisconsin officials are beginning to worry that the state will wake up Wednesday as the Florida of 2004 - a postelection battleground of lawyers and mudslinging.
As recently as three weeks ago, with polls showing Mr. Bush holding a small but steady lead over Mr. Kerry, Republican strategists frequently cited Wisconsin as the party's best chance at winning a swing state that went to the Democrats in 2000, when Al Gore won its 10 electoral votes by just 5,700 votes. Two polls this week, though, showed Mr. Kerry holding a one- or two-point lead.
The main battle is in the state's southeast corner, where the bulk of the population resides. Milwaukee, by far the largest city, often votes 65 percent or more Democratic, especially in its black and Hispanic neighborhoods. But the ring of counties around the city vote even more overwhelmingly Republican, sometimes 70 percent or more.
Dane County, to the west, is home to Madison and is overwhelmingly Democratic.
Taken together, these areas tend to cancel one another out, leaving it to the rest of the state, largely rural, to break the tie.
The two critical swing areas are in far western counties like La Crosse, Eau Claire and St. Croix, an area that has largely become bedroom communities for Minneapolis-St. Paul, and in the Fox River Valley, stretching southwest from Green Bay to Winnebago County.
La Crosse, which Mr. Bush visited Tuesday, went narrowly Democratic in 2000. Republicans then scolded themselves for paying too little attention to rural Wisconsin.
The Fox River Valley went Republican in 2000, but barely, and a strong turnout in normally Democratic Green Bay could shift it back into Democratic hands this year.
Turnout is always strong in Wisconsin - 58 percent in 1996 and 69 percent in 2000 - partly because it is one of a handful of states that allow people to register at their polling site on Election Day. That flexibility has led both parties to have armies of lawyers ready to monitor the voting for shenanigans. — RICK LYMAN
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