John McCain's increasingly limited strategy for victory calls for winning Appalachian states where the rural vote could be pivotal, such as Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia and always pivotal Ohio. In Pennsylvania, McCain "trails in the polls by a wide margin and ... in the past year over a half-million new Democrats have been added to the voter registration rolls," Charles Mahtesian writes for Politico. However, "Nearly everyone in a position to know thinks the race for Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes is considerably tighter than what recent polls reveal." (Read more) UPDATE, Oct. 24: NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd writes on First Read that it is now "clear that Pennsylvania has become the campaign’s do-or-die state."
Reports suggest McCain "is writing off Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico. If true, this means McCain is pinning his chances on pulling off an upset in Pennsylvania — a long shot, but probably the best strategy for desperate campaign," says the Evans-Novak Political Report.
In Virginia, the race "has gone country," reports Bob Lewis of The Associated Press. "McCain is looking to run up enormous margins in rural Republican strongholds. Obama is fighting just as hard to stay in play. ... At the same moment on Tuesday, current and former Mississippi governors toured opposite ends of the Virginia countryside for the campaigns, neither conceding a single city, town or crossroads."
Former Gov. Ray Mabus, a Democrat, said "One of the reasons I think Obama is going to be successful is he has not written off small-town, rural voters." Current Gov. Haley Barbour, campaigning in the Appalachian coalfield, told Lewis that crowds at rallies he attedned with former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore were larger than he expected and "stronger than an acre of garlic." Lewis notes, "Obama and McCain also are battling for rural voters and the 15 electoral votes at stake in neighboring North Carolina, another reliably Republican state also now in play." (Read more)
An earlier version of this item included some poll data that is being checked for accuracy.
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