Getting out the vote might be key for election victory

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With the televised debates behind them, President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry have little opportunity further to shape the presidential race except by waging an intense effort in the home stretch aimed at getting out the vote.\nVoters have a pretty good idea now what Bush and Kerry are all about. There isn't much room for either one to "define" his opponent or himself.\nAt this point, getting out the vote is equally -- if not more -- important than winning over the dwindling number of undecided voters, strategists in both parties agree.\nWith just two weeks to go to the election, polls showed Bush and Kerry in a dead heat -- back where they were at the beginning of the summer before the party conventions.\n"If anything, there's a little tail wind for Kerry coming out of the debates," said pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "Just as there was a little tail wind for Bush in August. But when would you rather have a little tail wind, in August or in mid-October?"\nKohut said how successful each side is in getting out its vote "is one of the most important elements in the end game. I think there is a fair number of votes still up for grabs. And some people aren't going to get any real convictions until we get right up to Election Day."\nBoth the Democrats and the Republicans, along with well-financed activist groups on both the left and the right, have spent months pouring resources into registering voters after the near deadlock of the 2000 presidential race and polls showing an extremely tight race again this year.\nThere has been an avalanche of new voter registrations at election boards across the nation. Now, with most registration deadlines passed, political activists for both candidates are pounding the pavement to ensure voters get to polling places on Nov. 2.\nParticular efforts are being directed at minorities, with a big effort on the fast-growing bloc of Hispanic voters.\nMost indications are that voter turnout will be high, given the high viewership of the debates and polls showing a larger-than-usual number of voters saying they're following the campaign closely.\nTurnout could mean the difference between victory and defeat in closely contested states.\nDemocrats are turning widespread concern about the war in Iraq and worry over the economy into voter recruitment lures. Meanwhile, Republicans are investing far more in get-out-the-vote drives than ever before, with an assist from religious and socially conservative advocacy groups.\nDespite huge amounts spent by both sides on negative advertising, the three presidential and one vice presidential debates allowed Americans to see the candidates as they are, up-close and unvarnished, supplanting campaign-generated caricatures.\n"These debates have essentially undone what amounts to $100 million in negative attacks," said Kerry senior strategist Mike Donilon.\nSince the nation already had a pretty good measure of Bush, Kerry benefited the most from the debates that showed him more than holding his own with the president, polls suggest.\nMarc Racicot, Bush's campaign chairman, said Americans now have before them "the central issue of the campaign: who are these two people, what will they bring to the office?"\nCampaigning in a dwindling number of battleground states, both Bush and Kerry will try to energize their political base with red-meat attacks, even as they keep reaching out for undecided voters.