Security obsession pushes swing states into Bush's grasp Paul Harris in Clay County, Missouri The Observer Sunday September 26, 2004
Voters in Missouri are desperate to protect the homeland, and are turning to the Republicans for reassurance
The air was hot and the mosquitoes were biting as Tom Brown sweatily trudged from house to house on the leafy suburban street. An elderly woman opened her door and eagerly took a leaflet from the Republican campaigner. Her next words brought a grin to Brown's face. 'I was going to vote for you anyway,' she said, before adding: 'And I'm a Democrat, too.'
Brown is campaigning on the streets of Clay County, Missouri, one of the most crucial battlegrounds in the US elections. The message was loud and clear: President George Bush is winning in the swing states.
That is a key development as the election enters its final stretch. Most of America is starkly divided into red and blue, but the swing states are the only place where the political palate is mixed. They are the places where the battle for the White House will be won or lost. They mainly stretch in an arc from the rust belt of Pennsylvania through Ohio and down into the Midwest. This is purple America, and nowhere is more purple than Clay County.
In the 2000 election Al Gore won Clay County by a single vote, making it the narrowest victory in the United States. But things do not look so close this time around. Clay County's Republicans are openly confident of victory. In fact, Brown knows things cannot stay this good. 'It is going so good right now it's scary. That will change. There is no way Bush can maintain this level of support,' he said.
All across the swing states, Bush has moved ahead as Republicans have begun to win the fierce ground war of the election. Republicans have taken leads in Pennsylvania and Ohio, which should have been firm Democratic territory. At the same time they have secured their own turf, taking double-digit leads in states like Nevada and Missouri.
Full: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1312847,00.html
A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States By Ford Fessenden New York Times September 26, 2004
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.
The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.
While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.
"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. The new voters, Mr. Elmendorf said, "could very much be the difference."
Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/politics/campaign/26vote.html?th