Bush may need broader campaign

WASHINGTON -- Despite President Bush's sagging approval ratings at a national level, strategists have long maintained he would make up the difference by working the Electoral College system in targeted battleground states -- the 18 or fewer states where the 2004 presidential race is likely to be decided.

But in recent weeks, Bush has slipped in key polls in individual states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania. That has forced party stalwarts to acknowledge a longstanding truism of presidential politics: It is nearly impossible to patch together the 270 electoral votes needed to win without building broad support nationwide, despite the mathematical quirks of the Electoral College system.

Republicans, who have touted the Bush/Cheney campaign as assembling the greatest grass-roots political operation in history, with an e-mail list of 6 million supporters and an intricate network of volunteers, acknowledge its limits.

"You can have the best ground game in history," said Bill McInturff, the Republican pollster, "but a fabulous ground game doesn't make up for the fact you're down 5 points."

Kerry makes bid to sway Virginia for Democrats. A5

After Bush's razor-thin victory four years ago, Republicans put extensive time and money into building a grass-roots machine that could help sew up swing states, confident that tactical maneuvers -- such as working with religious groups to boost the turnout among conservative Christians, targeting specific groups such as Cuban-Americans in South Florida, and registering new voters -- would put Bush over the top in a closely divided electorate.

Just last Friday, Ed Gillespie, the Republican National Committee chairman, sent an e-mail to supporters announcing a "test drive" of the new voter-turnout system this June, in which the party will recreate "election-like conditions" to check its recruitment, phone bank, and voter registration processes to make sure they will be effective in the final 72 hours before Nov. 2.

Such methods work, however, only if a candidate is already performing well at the national level, according to numerous Democratic, Republican, and independent strategists. In recent weeks, Bush has dropped as much as 6 points below his presumptive Democratic rival, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, even in a three-way race including independent Ralph Nader.

"For a Bush person to argue that the campaign can fight successfully by cherry-picking states seems to me hard to believe," independent political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said. "If the atmospherics are neutral, then absolutely, cherry-picking is essential. But it's not neutral. The national atmospherics are pretty bad for Bush."

Governor Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said a candidate could conceivably win the election by eking out wins in selected states -- but only if the national vote is within 1 or 2 points.

"You can lose the national vote and win the Electoral College," Rendell said, pointing to Bush's 2000 victory as an example. "But if you start losing it by 3 or 4 points, there is no way that translates into an Electoral College victory."

Bush campaign officials do not deny that May has been a tough month, between the abuse scandal in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, continued insurgencies in Iraq, the downfall of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi, and a continuing stream of new books damaging to the administration. The downward slide grew so alarming that Bush launched a public relations mission to rebuild support for the Iraq occupation, starting with a speech May 24.

Matthew Dowd, the chief Bush campaign strategist, said he believes the dropping poll numbers have leveled out, and predicted that new data in the coming weeks would show Bush's approval rating on the rise.

"The good news, I think, for us is that we had a series of bad events, and I think we've actually turned a corner," Dowd said, pointing to continued strong support among Republicans as an indication that Bush's national approval ratings will not drop below 44 percent or 45 percent.

But surveys in battleground states confirm the national slide, suggesting that Bush would have a very hard time defeating Kerry if the election were held today. State by state, Kerry appears to be doing better than former vice president Al Gore was at this stage of the election in 2000, closing the margin or beating Bush in every state where Gore was competitive, except in Tennessee.

Among the positive developments for Kerry:

In Pennsylvania, with 21 electoral votes, voters picked Kerry over Bush by 44 percent to 41 percent, with 6 percent supporting Nader, according to a Quinnipiac University poll taken on May 24 and 25. That marked a shift from a similar Quinnipiac poll conducted mid-April, in which Bush beat Kerry, 45 percent to 39 percent, with 8 percent supporting Nader.

In Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes and has been carried by every winning Republican presidential candidate, voters back Kerry over Bush, 49 percent to 42 percent, according to an American Research Group survey taken between May 10 and 12. Nader drew support from 2 percent. Bush won Ohio by 4 points in 2000.

An Iowa survey taken last week by Research 2000 suggested that 46 percent of those questioned back Kerry, compared with 42 percent for Bush and 3 percent for Nader. Iowa, which Gore won by a single point in 2000, carries 7 electoral votes.

But Bush can point to other evidence suggesting he can challenge Kerry not only in battleground states, but also in the "blue states" traditionally carried by Democrats:

Another Ohio poll, released Saturday, had Bush at 47 percent, Kerry at 41 percent, and Nader at 3 percent. The Mason-Dixon Polling telephone survey of 1,500 registered voters was conducted between May 20 and May 25 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

In New Jersey, which comes with 15 electoral votes, those surveyed gave Kerry only a 3-point lead over Bush, 46 percent to 43 percent, defying the usually strong Democratic support in that state. Nader won 5 percent in that poll, taken between May 10 and May 16.

Michigan voters surveyed by the Detroit News on May 11 and May 12 gave Bush the edge over Kerry, 44 percent to 40 percent, with 2 percent for Nader. Michigan, which turned out in strong support for Gore, has 17 electoral votes.

Oregon is a statistical tie. A Research 2000 poll taken between May 6 and May 8 suggested 47 percent would back Kerry, compared with 45 percent for Bush and 5 percent for Nader, in a state that brings with it 7 electoral votes. Florida, too, appeared tied, with Bush at 47 percent to Kerry's 46 percent, according to an ARG poll taken between May 17 and 19.

"Kerry is not setting the world on fire yet, to be sure," pollster John Zogby said. "But with that said, these are not healthy numbers for an incumbent. You can turn them upside down, shake them all up; no matter which way you look at them, to the degree that history is of any use at all, and it may not be, the last three incumbents running for reelection with numbers like this were [Gerald] Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H. W. Bush in 1992."

All three lost.

A nationwide CBS poll released last week indicated that Kerry would beat Bush 47 percent to 41 percent, with 5 percent voting for Nader. But an ABC News/Washington Post poll, also last week, suggested that Bush would win 45 percent to 44 percent, with 6 percent going to Nader.

By contrast, a similar CBS poll taken in April of 2000 predicted Bush would beat Gore, 43 percent to 41 percent. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in May of 2000 also predicted Bush would win, by a 5- or 6-point margin.

Dowd, the Bush strategist, acknowledged that the president's declining national numbers are reflected in surveys from the individual states. But he cautioned against putting too much stock in either national or local numbers, saying, "The country is dead even, and the Electoral College map reflects that."

States such as Florida, Ohio, and Oregon show fluctuating support for both Bush and Kerry, Dowd said, and he expects them to continue doing so.

But Tad Devine, the Kerry strategist and close adviser to Gore four years ago, said Kerry holds advantages not only at the national level, as reflected in national polls, but in individual states where he is doing better than Gore was four years ago. The difference between 2000 and 2004, Devine said, is "day and night."

"The fact of the matter is, you can find a number here or there that might support the view that Bush is going to survive the election, but the vast majority of research and polling shows the president is at historic lows in job approval, wrong track numbers," Devine said. "It's a prescription for disaster for an incumbent candidate."

Anne E. Kornblut can be reached at akornblut@globe.com.