Long primary gave Dems advantage, Republicans say

ST. PAUL — Republican strategists say John McCain faces an uphill battle in the general election because the long Democratic primary allowed Barack Obama to target scores of new voters.

Even though Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) clinched the nomination months before Sen. Obama (D-Ill.), he has not created the same campaign organization to attract new voters in November, these strategists say.

{mosads}"If Obama's registration drive is successful, it's going to be hard," said Charlie Bass, a former congressman from New Hampshire who heads a coalition of centrist Republicans.

Bass, speaking here Monday at a forum organized by the National Journal, said getting voters to the polls would be his "top concern" if he were working for the McCain campaign.

Republicans have historically fared far better than have Democrats in attracting voters to the polls. In 2004, which was decided by about 3 million votes, President Bush brought more than 1 million additional Republicans to the polls than Democrats.

A Republican official, defending the party’s registration efforts, said that Democrats fell short in the 2000 and 2004 elections after touting their voter-drive efforts, and predicted the same in 2008.

But with 35 million people participating in the long primary battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the Democrats have some built-in advantages in key battleground states.

As McCain started to prepare for the general election, both Obama and Clinton spent millions finding new voters through micro-targeting, a technique that allows campaigns to analyze and identify potential supporters. Each side set up field offices in states and dispatched thousands of volunteers to sign up new voters and conduct door-to-door canvassing.

The effects in some battleground states are stark.

For instance, in Ohio, which held its primary on March 4, weeks after McCain effectively clinched the nomination, 2.4 million Democrats voted, compared to 1.1 million Republicans. In seven Ohio counties, the vote totals exceeded the number of votes for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 in each of those counties, according to the Democratic National Committee.

Pennsylvania also held its primary after McCain had clinched the nomination, and as of last week, Democrats have registered 4.3 million voters compared to 3.2 million Republicans. The battle now is for the 1 million other voters in the state who are not affiliated with either party.

In Virginia, almost 1 million Virginians participated in February’s Democratic primary, compared to less than 500,000 Republicans.

Even in Florida, which was hotly contested between Republicans but not among Democrats because of a fight between the state and national party, the GOP trails Democrats among registered voters. There are 3.9 million GOP voters there, compared to 4.4 million Democrats.

{mospagebreak}Republicans, however, point out that the numbers in Florida are similar to those of 2004, when Bush defeated Kerry in the state.

“We are confident we have the volunteers, voter databases and resources to turn out our voters and win,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

But with just more than 60 days until the general election, some Republicans said McCain should concede the race in finding new voters and hand that responsibility over to outside interest groups, like the National Rifle Association and religious organizations.

{mosads}That task has been made easier, they say, because conservatives are now energized by the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) as McCain's running mate.

"The difference for the Republican Party is that the [organization] will come from outside the party," said Chuck Donovan of the Family Research Council.

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union (and a columnist for The Hill), said Monday that the McCain campaign cannot compete with Obama's ground game.

"They basically had no campaign structure because of the way he won it," Keene said, referring to the come-from-behind primary won by the cash-strapped McCain campaign.

McCain then turned to organizing a general election campaign, which included shoring up his base and launching television advertisements.

Keene said keeping up with Democrats in states and local districts would require enormous amounts of money and attention to detail.

"They're trying, but they're behind and they're not going to catch up," Keene said.

"At the end of the day, the aggregate benefit to the Obama campaign and the party is a significant one," said William Miller Jr., national political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But Miller added that McCain could benefit if Obama's initial appeal to new voters wears off over the course of a heated campaign. That may keep those voters at home on Election Day.

“Like every political candidate, you drive along and get a lot of dings on the car, and it doesn’t look quite as shiny and new,” Miller said.

“The question is going to be, are those people still as excited as they were in February and March when they were introduced to the senator, or are they going to [say], ‘Oh, he looked really shiny and different, now he looks more like my old car’?”