Vote-Hunters' Elusive Prey

But seen from a different angle, he's entirely different. He's traditional, even conservative, pins flags to his truck and his T-shirt, tears up sometimes during the national anthem, loves God and country and heterosexual marriage.

From the looks of the nine specimens gathered here for the focus group, he is clean-cut or letting things slip, dressed in a tie or a gold chain, wears his hair like a Marine or like the last man out of a bar, carries a Bible or something by mystery writer James Patterson, has three little girls or a bachelor pad, sports a college class ring or a pale strip where his wedding ring used to be.

His habitat is the "I-4 corridor," which, in the political map of Florida, is the equator. North of Interstate 4, the culture gets southern, the Panhandle plus Jacksonville, both growing increasingly Republican. South of I-4 is more like New York, retired Jews and immigrants, which apart from the Cubans in Miami is dependably Democratic. In the middle, around I-4, some of everything spills into the suburban soup.

Snoop around and you can find any cultural marker, and then its opposite. Churches of all kinds, old and new, evangelical and mainline Presbyterian, mega and clapboard, a Hindu temple and synagogues. Then abundant evidence of spiritual drift in the strip malls along I-4: lots of Hooters and Pleasure Island (Open All Nite!).

The Strait Shoot gun range and Bubba's Bodacious BBQ are a strip mall away from evidence of budding sophistication: An international sushi bar, called Sushi Bar, European facials by Ang, a French bakery. There's a Starbucks, in posh downtown Winter Park, where you can also find Williams Sonoma and rattles for $40 and lush obscure flora growing in lovingly tended street boxes. But at the tables outside there are three punk rockers drinking caramel mocha concoctions.

At the local Books-A-Million, the two main sections up front are "Idiot's Guides" and "Chick Lit."

There are retirees but the average age drops by the week, as young parents move to one of the suburbs here. They come for housing that's inexpensive but classy, near the romantically named Lost Lake or Red Bug Lake, the golf courses in every development, the comfort of white gates demarcating Springtree Village or Huntleigh Woods or Oakwell Reserve. You can find contentedness, a mother buying her daughter an ice cream cone, an old man preparing his fishing gear, two students from Rollins College flirting at a picnic table.

There's also disappointment, signs that somebody thinks the country "is headed in the wrong direction," as the pollsters like to ask: a 53-year-old man who came here to work for Disney and now mans the front desk at a hotel, a 33-year-old who came to work in the high tech sector and got downsized. And then there's anyone stuck on I-4 at the bookends of a working day, where traffic ranges from backed up to crawling to at a standstill.

From a demographer's point of view, I-4 is fascinating, "always churning," says Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of Florida, Tampa. From a politician's standpoint, it's nerve-racking: "Five million people, with no fixed loyalties, all up for grabs," says Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). "Depending on what they care about at the moment they can move either way."

As with a Rorschach test, everyone sees what they want to. Graham sees veterans attracted to Kerry, mothers who care about schools and the environment, seniors furious about Bush's Medicare reform.

Ralph Reed, Bush's Southeast strategist, sees veterans pleased with the war, seniors happy with their new prescription drug benefits, people used to no state income tax happy with lower federal taxes, Jews happy with Bush's position on Israel.

Recently there's been an influx of non-Cuban Hispanics, mostly Puerto Ricans from New York. A stop in one of their coffee shops is now obligatory for candidates. Graham talks about them like a standard Democratic interest group. Reed says they'll go the way of the Cubans.

But given the last election, even a veteran like Reed is nervous. "It's very similar to 2000," he says. "It will be razor-thin and extra-competitive and hard-fought, and the president will prevail. But we're not overconfident by any means. We're not resting on our laurels, we are running as if we were behind and taking nothing for granted."

"Looking back instead of looking forward is dangerous business in Florida," says MacManus.