Mofo Politics | Hoping Obama Fails

McCain makes risky play for Pennsylvania

Posted October 12th, 2008 under Headlines Tags: gallup, mccain, obama, pennsylvania, polls, zogby

Politico:

Pennsylvania hasn’t voted Republican for president since 1988. Democrats have increased their registration numbers here by more than a half-million over the past year, and Barack Obama has a double-digit lead in the polls.

Yet John McCain’s campaign continues to signal that it intends to contest the state and its 21 electoral votes to the end. It is a high-risk, high-return endeavor: Pennsylvania represents a costly gambit, one that siphons resources from must-win states such as Ohio and Florida, but a win here would enable McCain to lose a few other states that George W. Bush carried and still capture the White House.

So with 23 days until Election Day, the state finds itself at the epicenter of the presidential campaign, with both sides spending precious time and money trying to energize their respective bases and drive up their opponents’ negatives.

For Obama, that means trying to offset white, working-class voters’ uneasiness with him by hammering McCain as out of touch on their economic struggles, and driving a huge turnout here in the state’s most populous city, where he spent Saturday barnstorming four neighborhoods.

For McCain, it means courting the politically competitive but historically Republican suburbs ringing Philadelphia, as well as the industrial and rural parts of the state that carried Hillary Clinton to a 9-point victory over Obama in the Democratic primary in April. The McCain campaign believes it can sway voters in those areas by emphasizing a socially conservative message and branding Obama an elitist liberal with shady past associates.

Thus, McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent Saturday morning in Johnstown — an industrial area in southwestern Pennsylvania dominated by the type of older, white, working-class, socially conservative voters who favored Clinton over Obama in the primary — where Palin blasted Obama’s support for abortion rights as “absolutely radical.”

MORE:

• Zogby: Obama 48, McCain 44
• Gallup: Among likely voters, Obama 50, McCain 46