In Final Days, Tours Converge

Sen. John McCain campaigns with "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher during a town square gathering in Sandusky, Ohio. (By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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DuHaime, who is charged with implementing the campaign's strategy, offered reporters his own frank assessment, saying McCain's hopes are tied to winning a clutch of states that have historically leaned to the GOP: Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Missouri. If he can do that, DuHaime said, then he can win the election with one of two endgames: a victory in Pennsylvania or a combination of wins in New Hampshire, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado.

The target demographic, aides said, will be older whites, who seem to be coming home for McCain. In a strategy memo this week, the campaign asserted that "our long identified target of 'Walmart women' -- those women without a college degree in households under $60,000 a year in income are also swinging back solidly in our direction."

Senior Obama advisers were dismissive of the McCain calculations. "What are you going to say on the Thursday before the election, 'We're all out of bullets?' " strategist David Axelrod said in an interview. "We're not going to let up one bit, but it's nice to see so many opportunities."

The Obama strategy from the start was to create a wide variety of potential combinations that would carry the campaign to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. Rather than fight on the same map that Kerry chose in 2004, Obama's team built organizations in the Rocky Mountain West, as well as Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana, areas Democrats had rarely contested.

"We've been playing this election on Bush turf for a long time. Remember we said we would target Montana, North Carolina and Indiana and they said we were crazy? Now they're competing there," strategist Robert Gibbs said. "I'd rather be us than them."

McCain strategists say they see a path to victory by winning the most reliably Republican states, minus Iowa, which gets them to 260, then finding 10 more votes from the 23 belonging to New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico. Asked about this, Gibbs answered, "I'd tell 'em good luck."

In the campaign's final phase, Obama's team has concluded that all the states Kerry won are safely in their column. They remain confident about Iowa, where Obama will make a stop Friday, more as a thank-you for the January caucus victory that made him a contender than out of strategic concern, aides said.

As he picks up the pace before Election Day, Obama will continue to press in states Bush won. On Thursday, he was in Florida, Virginia and Missouri. Friday will take him to Indiana and Saturday to Nevada, Colorado and Missouri. He will spend Sunday in Ohio.

Campaigning with Obama, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said the Obama campaign is employing a different strategy than the one Kerry used when he lost the Sunshine State four years ago. Nelson pointed to trips by Obama, his wife, Michelle, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Biden and his wife, Jill, to central and northern Florida, not just southeast Florida where Democrats traditionally perform well. As for Nelson, he will campaign with Biden in Tallahassee, Gainesville, Fla., and Dayton, Ohio, on Sunday.

Despite public and internal polls that show Obama with a comfortable lead in the race for electoral votes, the candidate himself has been the leading voice in telling his supporters the campaign "cannot afford to slow down or sit back or let up one day, one minute, one second in this last week."

"They may need an inside straight," Axelrod said of McCain and his followers, "but sometimes people pull an inside straight, so we need to be vigilant."

Slevin reported from Florida, Virginia and Missouri.