A CNN analysis shows Vice President Al Gore with a slight advantage entering the stretch.
Anchored by his strength in California, the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, Gore leads in 16 states and the District of Columbia -- 208 electoral votes in all. The South and Western interior are the Texas governor's territory: The GOP nominee leads in 20 states with a combined 167 electoral votes.
"I believe there's better days ahead for America, and it starts with making sure every kid gets educated in America,'' Gov. George W. Bush tells an audience in Redwood City, California, Tuesday. California is thought to be a safe state for the vice president.
Fourteen states with a combined 163 electoral votes are considered toss-ups. In particular, Florida and its 25 electoral votes stand out on the map -- a worrisome sign for Republicans.
"George W. Bush is going to have to make some big decisions about where he is going to put his emphasis, money and resources. Gore has a little bit more flexibility, " said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster.
Five of the 14 battlegrounds in the industrial belt -- Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri -- have been receiving the lion's share of attention. In a 15-day span between Sept. 4-19, the Bush and Gore campaigns and Republican and Democratic party organizations spent $17 million on television advertising, devoting more than half -- $9.8 million -- to those five states.
Factor in Florida -- where Republicans outspent the Democrats by more than a 3-to-1 margin during that same period -- and the percentage of television ad money spend in those six battleground states jumps to more than 70 percent.
Ohio -- a state renowned for its common-sense conservatism -- is perhaps the most surprising of all the battlegrounds. Every elected statewide office holder is a Republican, as are the state's two U.S. senators. But when the Bush campaign lists the Buckeye State as perhaps its best chance in the region these days, it's a statement of concern, not confidence.
Vice President Al Gore takes a question from the audience as he delivers his Medicare message Tuesday in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Michigan is considered a tossup state in the presidential election.
The city of Columbus is the battleground within the battleground. Mayor Michael Coleman is the city's first Democratic leader in 28 years, its first-ever African-American mayor, and a key player Gore's effort to overtake Bush in Ohio.
"There is a lot to do. There is the field mechanics that need to take place, there is getting out the vote, there is persuading the voters -- mayors around the state saying this is the right thing for our cities," Coleman said.
Blue-collar male voters are viewed as a crucial voting bloc across the state and much of the industrial Midwest.
"They are for the most part social conservatives. They are not comfortable with Democrats on guns and a lot of those kinds of issues. On the other hand, they are economic populists that don't trust big business, so they've got a lot of concerns about Vice President Gore and they are not quite comfortable with Governor Bush," said Republican pollster Bill McInturuff.
The unemployment rate is 2.4 percent in Columbus and 4 percent statewide -- reason for top Ohio Republicans to urge Bush be careful when talking about tax cuts, a staple of past GOP presidential efforts.
"We need to reframe the message about the tax cut and really put it in terms of Al Gore being for bigger government, more regulation, things that will hurt people's jobs and hurt their lives and not really be the same kind of middle of the road Democrat that Bill Clinton was," said GOP strategist Curt Steiner.
But organized labor is strong in areas where Gore needs help the most.
"In the 1996 election, just as an example, 40 percent of the vote in Michigan came from union households," said Steve Rosenthal, national political director of the AFL-CIO. In Illinois, it was 31 percent of the vote. In Ohio it was 34 percent of the vote."
Republican governors of battleground states haven't been shy about offering Bush some advice. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge recently urged the GOP nominee to sharpen his TV ads in the Keystone State and elsewhere.
"The message is there and the crowds are strong," Ridge told CNN. "They are very enthusiastic, but I do believe we need to rethink how we are delivering the message. George is doing fine, Dick (Cheney) is doing fine, but I think the surrogates and the delivery mechanism needs to change and adjust, as campaigns do. You just change and adjust."
ELECTION 2000 |
