Marketing McCain(TM)

A pair of market research firms in South Carolina polled voters there in April and September and concluded that if McCain's brand were a product, it would be part Ford pickup, part Wrangler jeans and part Timex watch.

"His brand strengths were identified as: trustworthiness, looks presidential, prepared for the job, has relevant experience," said Mark Newsome, a senior vice president at Chernoff Newman, which conducted the surveys with MarketSearch. "He's really resting his laurels on his own brand."

But the firms also concluded that McCain's brand has weaknesses: a striking lack of warmth and personal charm. And Democrats insist that there are opportunities to attack the building blocks of the McCain brand, especially his assertion that he is a moderate.

In a recent poll of women in battleground states by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, about 23 percent incorrectly believed that McCain supports abortion rights, compared with 18 percent who understood that he is an opponent. More than half said they did not know where he stands on the issue. Setting the record straight could weaken his hold on some voters, Democrats said.

"There is this reputation of independence that gets conflated with an expectation of moderation," said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll for the abortion rights group. "But what we have found is people can be turned around on that with a very few facts."

Last month Democrats pounced on McCain's gaffe about Iranian support for al-Qaeda. In interviews, McCain was angry and dismissive, saying he merely misspoke, while his aides sought to argue that his comments were accurate. The Democrats spent days contrasting the mistake with McCain's claims of experience.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean recently called McCain a "blatant opportunist" on Iraq and the economy, prompting an angry response from Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, who accused Dean of making "reckless statements attacking John McCain's character and integrity."

Schmidt calls the attacks from Democrats "not very worrisome" because McCain has been seen as standing up to his party and fighting on issues -- the war in Iraq and immigration -- that have damaged him politically.

Independent polling data suggest Schmidt may be right. McCain's favorability, especially among independents, remains far higher than that of Bush or congressional Republicans, suggesting that voters view him differently -- at least for now. Republican support for McCain is stronger than Democratic support for his rivals.

But other surveys present some concerns for McCain. In a recent Gallup poll on presidential weaknesses, 40 percent of voters said they "least wanted" McCain to be elected. Of those, most cited his position on Iraq and his similarity to Bush.

Democrats offer their own polls, which show that 59 percent of voters know "just some" or "very little" about McCain's record on issues.

Even Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who is supporting McCain for president, worries that voters have "an incomplete picture of John," saying, "They think of him as a war hero, and perhaps they identify him with the Iraq war." He said that part of his own job on the campaign trail is to tell Americans how McCain has pushed for reform on Capitol Hill.

"I think they sense that he's principled and independent," Lieberman said, "but I don't think they know all the details of what it's taken him to do."