They're the most
fickle voters and potentially the most powerful. Thus,
with party nominations secure, John McCain and Barack Obama
now are pushing toward the center to win them over.
Meet the ''mushy
middle,'' a complex chunk of people likely to decide the
presidential election but difficult to reach and hard to
please.
''Yes, we can!''
isn't floating their boat. Nothing much is, from either
candidate.
They aren't
uniformly conservative or liberal, and they don't fit strict
Republican or Democratic orthodoxy. They aren't typically
engaged in politics, and they don't much care about
the campaign. And like so many others, they are
extraordinarily pessimistic.
''To me, it's not
about the party, it's about who is the best person for
the job,'' says Pam Robinett, 47, from Wellington, Kan., who
always votes. Then again, ''they'll all lie, cheat,
and steal to get what they want.''
Talk about a
tough sell.
''The country's
going to go to hell in a handbasket with this election,''
seethes James Nauman, 55, from Lutz, Fla. ''I don't think
Obama's qualified, and McCain's another Bush. Neither
of them really have impressed me.''
Both will try.
A recent AP-Yahoo
News poll finds that 15% call themselves moderates and
aren't solidly supporting a candidate. More than half of
this still-persuadable middle is made up of
independents.
''The center
always matters,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew
Research Center. ''It matters more this year. Both
candidates were nominated because they appealed to
independents and moderates, so how these voters make a
choice between Obama and McCain will be even more
decisive.''
___
For now, at
least, the race is competitive, and the rivals' bases are
mostly intact.
The survey,
conducted by Knowledge Networks, found that three in four
Republicans and three in four conservatives are backing
McCain, while Obama has nearly identical support among
Democrats and liberals.
So both are
backing away from their party's ideological ends to appeal
to this unpredictable swath in between.
McCain is moving
away from the unpopular President Bush if not from the
Republican Party itself. He emphasizes bipartisanship while
pressing two issues that resonate strongly with voters
of all stripes.
He ''stood up to
the president and sounded the alarm on global warming,''
one McCain commercial says. Another promotes a ''bipartisan
plan to lower prices at the pump, reduce dependence on
foreign oil through domestic drilling and champion
energy alternatives.''
Obama, for his
part, broke from the left by backing new rules for the
government's terrorist eavesdropping program, straddling a
Supreme Court ruling striking down a gun ban and
objecting to the justices' decision outlawing
executions of child rapists. He even quoted conservative
hero Ronald Reagan's ''trust but verify'' line in
reacting to North Korea's latest agreement on nuclear
weapons.
His leadoff
campaign commercial cast him as the embodiment of the center
and pitched family values, patriotism, ''welfare to work''
and lower taxes. It stressed ''love of country'' and
''working hard without making excuses'' -- echoes of
Bill Clinton.
McCain naturally
may be better positioned to capture more of the middle;
he came out of the GOP's center to dispatch liberal Rudy
Giuliani on his left and conservative Mitt Romney and
Christian evangelical Mike Huckabee on his right.
Obama emerged from the party's left to topple the more
centrist Hillary Rodham Clinton.
However, Obama
and McCain both won their nominations with the support of
independents, moderates and crossovers from the opposite
party.
Some 39% of
voters called themselves Democratic, 29 percent Republican,
and 32 percent independent in the June 13-23 survey, part of
an ongoing study tracking opinions of the same group
of people over the election cycle. The overall margin
of sampling error was plus or minus 2.3 percentage
points.
That Democratic
edge suggests Obama may be less dependent on votes in the
middle than McCain.
Still, the
likeliest path to the White House cuts through the center of
the electorate.
''They're the
kingmakers in American politics,'' said Matt Bennett, a
Democratic operative at the centrist Third Way policy group.
''They're the people who decide elections.''
___
Who exactly are
these power-wielding voters?
They look much
like the general population. They reflect the same
frustration with the status quo. A significant majority has
a low opinion of Bush and Congress. They have more
favorable impressions of Democrats than Republicans.
Many are feeling the economic pinch. They want troops
to return from Iraq as soon as possible.
Like the broad
electorate, they rank gas prices and the economy as their
top concerns, followed by health care, Social Security,
taxes and education. Terrorism and Iraq are lower.
But there are
important differences.
Compared with
far-right and far-left voters, this group tends to be more
Hispanic, more Catholic than the left and more secular than
the right. They are more likely to be married with
children and live in far-flung suburbs or rural areas.
They also tend to be less educated.
They are not
nearly as motivated as those who identify with political
parties or ideologies. Fewer are registered to vote.
''These are the
most disengaged voters,'' said Ron Shaiko, a public
policy specialist at Dartmouth College. ''There's a point at
which they're going to engage, and it's not clear who
will win when they do.''
Nearly half view
McCain favorably, while slightly more than a third see
Obama positively. Still, the candidates are little-known to
a quarter, and many have little enthusiasm for either.
''I like McCain
more because I'm concerned about Obama. I question his
judgments,'' says Tony Miller, 39 and a left-leaning
moderate from Springfield, Ill. Conversely, Susan
Carroll, 43, a moderate Democrat from Garrettsville,
Ohio, says Obama's ''the better choice'' because ''I
honestly think that McCain is antiwoman.''
This voting
group's views cross some of the usual lines.
For instance,
they overwhelmingly favor abortion rights and legal rights
for same-sex couples, typically Democratic and liberal
positions. But they also overwhelmingly say cutting
taxes should be a high priority, typically a
Republican and conservative refrain.
These voters say
they are far less interested in cultural issues and far
more interested in bread-and-butter subjects like health
care and Social Security.
''All are a few
points from the ideological center of the country, and
they tend to be fiscally conservative and socially
tolerant,'' said Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster
in New York.
___
Take Jan Thomas.
''I'm liberal in
some areas and I'm conservative in others,'' says the
undecided moderate from Stevensville, Mont., who is 69 and
shuns party labels.
Unlike the GOP,
she supports abortion rights and declares ''to each his
own'' on gay marriage. Splitting from the Democrats, she
objects to ''big government,'' costly entitlement
programs that ''lead to dependency'' and universal
health care proposals ''that mean higher taxes.''
She's unsettled
about both candidates.
Obama's
''inexperience and his voting record on gun control'' bug
her; she owns two handguns, a shotgun, and a rifle and
is still ''a pretty good shot.'' She doesn't like
McCain's ''vacillating'' or stances on the environment
and comprehensive immigration reform. ''I do not believe in
global warming,'' she says. And ''we've got to secure our
borders.''
David Donovan,
31, a GOP-leaning independent from Crystal River, Fla.,
also is ''not exactly thrilled with either of them.''
McCain on foreign
policy ''just doesn't make a lot of sense,'' but
Obama's ''abundance of gun control'' irks this gun owner, as
does the Democrats' education platform. And, he says,
''I think taxes suck.''
Not that he has
time to follow the campaign closely; Donovan travels 150
miles round-trip to build bridges for 14 hours a day. The
commute costs his one-income household $50 in tolls
and $220 in fuel each week. He and his wife haven't
had health care coverage for two years. She's on
disability after seven mild strokes. Her student loan debt
is growing.
''There are some
days where I'd vote for Mickey Mouse for president,''
Donovan said. ''It's got to be better than this.'' (Liz
Sidoti, AP)
