Campaigns pick up the pace to meet schedule

By Adam Nagourney

updated 11:18 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2008

DAYTON, Ohio - Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are confronting a sharply abbreviated general election campaign season, the product of the late nominating conventions and a boom in early voting in tightly contested states. This shortened timetable is forcing both campaigns to recalibrate the pace of television advertisements, accelerate voter turnout operations and tailor the candidates’ traveling schedules to accommodate states where voting is imminent.

While it is just eight weeks until Election Day, even that schedule overstates how much time the candidates have to win over voters. More than 30 states allow some form of early voting, forcing the campaigns to deal with a rolling series of Election Days. Iowa, a crucial state, will begin voting on Sept. 23, less than three weeks after the end of the Republican convention marked the traditional start of the general election sprint.

“I think it’s unprecedented, a whole new way of looking at elections,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who is not involved with either campaign. “A combination of the late conventions and the way early voting is becoming even earlier around the country is going to have a big, big impact.”

Close-the-deal messages
Aides to Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, are devising state-by-state advertising strategies so that their close-the-deal messages — typically kept in reserve until the last 10 days before Election Day — are released to coincide with when people are reaching their final decisions. The old advertising formula was to begin after Labor Day with soft biographical advertisements introducing the candidate, followed by commercials drawing sharp contrasts with the other side, and closing with the strongest argument. But that formula is obsolete, aides to both candidates said.

The traveling schedules of the candidates, spouses and running-mates are being adjusted so they front-load the time spent in states where, practically speaking, there is not much time before people begin to vote. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain were in Ohio on Tuesday, on-the-ground evidence of the fact that this state will for the first time permit early voting in presidential elections. Voting starts Sept. 30.

Voter turnout operations that once would not have kicked into high-gear until the weekend before Election Day are about to be revved up and will remain in operation to accommodate the elongated period of early voting, posing new expenses and complications. The campaigns are using computer models — studying past voting trends along with consumer and demographic data — to try to identify people most likely to be early voters, and press them to vote.

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“We are now less than 30 days from people voting,” said Steve Hildebrand, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “Easily one-third of the people are going to vote before Election Day.”

Time constraints limit options
Given the truncated general election season, campaign aides said they were going to have make triage decisions sooner about what states the nominees are actually going to compete in. The ambitious battleground presented by Mr. Obama’s aides, of at least 18 states, may soon get whittled down in deference to a calendar that does not leave that many days for campaigning. With deceptively little time left, it is now unlikely that Mr. McCain will go to, say, New Jersey, or that Mr. Obama will visit Georgia, early wish-list states for the two candidates.

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