McCain fights to find votes in Wisconsin

MILWAUKEE | Wisconsin? Really?

“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we could win here,” said Mark Salter, a top aide to Sen. John McCain.

But the Republican presidential nominee, who Thursday began a two-day swing through the nation’s cheese capital, is getting crushed in every recent statewide poll. The latest survey, done by Research 2000, puts the Arizona senator down by 10 percentage points, 51 percent to 41 percent, a four-point shift in favor of Sen. Barack Obama since its previous poll Sept. 22-23.

Polls released this week by Rasmussen and SurveyUSA also give the Democrat a 10-point edge.

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“Right now, I’m not sure what John McCain is looking at,” said Jim Simmons, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. “I don’t see the state as winnable anymore.”

As Mr. Obama expands his playing field - he’s leading in the polls in Republican strongholds like Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri and Ohio - Mr. McCain’s map is shrinking fast.

After pulling out of Michigan - “the economy up there was killing us,” one top McCain aid said candidly - the Republican has just three traditionally Democratic blue states that are even remotely in play: Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

“They have no place else to go,” said Charles Franklin, political professor at University of Wisconsin at Madison and co-founder of pollster.com. “Nothing looks good now … they’ve got to find electoral votes somewhere.”

Well aware of his position, Mr. McCain is hitting Republican strongholds outside of Milwaukee and in the south-central part of the state, looking to make a come-from-behind move and put the state’s 10 electoral votes in the Republican column.

“We can, must, and will win the state of Wisconsin,” he said to thousands of cheering supporters in Waukesha. His running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was a bit more candid: “It’s gonna be a hard fought battle here - maybe even down to the wire.”

McCain aides say the Republican nominee has long had his eye on Wisconsin and point out that his first campaign stop after leaving the Republican National Convention was in Cedarburg, a suburb of Milwaukee, where thousands turned out on Main Street.

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