Courting the Independents

All of the polls have been consistent on one point: This will be a much different presidential election than it would have been if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had won the Democratic nomination instead of Obama. The New York senator did roughly as well against McCain in national polls, but it would have been a more traditional, partisan election, because Clinton lost more independent voters to McCain even as she held on to more Democrats. Obama wins more independents, but loses more Democrats.

“It’s interesting that the two parties chose non-ideological candidates. That’s where the independent voters are,” said Matthew Dowd, a pollster and strategist on Bush’s 2000 and 2004 election campaigns who broke with the president over the Iraq War and now considers himself an independent, too. “They’re tired of all the bickering and posturing, and they want it to stop.”

Now, the challenge for Obama and McCain is to figure out how to break the tie.

There is little question about the importance of winning independent voters, since they’ve been largely responsible for the past two changes of control of Congress.

In 1994, Republicans won independent voters 55 percent to 41 percent, helping the GOP win control of Congress in that year’s election sweep, according to Republican pollster David Winston. And in 2006, Democrats won the independents 57 percent to 39 percent, a major factor in bringing the Democrats to power on Capitol Hill.

Too Numerous to Ignore

Presidential elections don’t always come down to independent voters, of course. Bush proved that in 2004, when he won a second term largely by squeezing every last possible vote out of the Republican base. And Democratic officials think Obama could benefit from an expanded base, thanks to all of the newly registered voters who turned out in the primary battles between him and Clinton.

Still, a base-only strategy isn’t likely to be a winning strategy with Obama and McCain, since each will lose some of his party’s voters to the other side, according to recent polls. Obama loses more of his base than McCain does but still leads in recent national polls, suggesting the swelling Democratic ranks might give him some slack.

Leaning Democratic on Most Issues: Click Here to View Chart

And with roughly one out of three voters identifying as independent, no presidential campaign can afford to ignore them. A recent Gallup Poll memo said the independent vote may be more critical to McCain, since Democrats have the advantage right now in party identification and enthusiasm among their voters.

McCain’s campaign acknowledged the importance of independent voters in an online “strategy briefing” slide show recently posted on its Web site. “No longer can a Republican candidate win by just running up the score with our base,” campaign manager Rick Davis said in his narration of the briefing.

But Obama needs them, too. In fact, a survey released two weeks ago by Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling firm, sounded some alarms about whether Obama is actually doing as well among independents as he needs to. The firm found Obama is pulling in a far lower share of independent voters than congressional Democrats did in 2006 and even slightly fewer than Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts did in 2004.

“It would be hard to concede independents in any way, because historically Democrats have done a little better with independents,” said Steve Jarding, a Democratic strategist who helped Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia win his seat two years ago. Jarding is not working on the presidential race this year.

Courting the Independents

It’s not clear yet why Obama isn’t doing better with independents, because the Obama vs. McCain matchup is too new to have generated a wealth of polling data, said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, whose firm produced the Democracy Corps survey. But given the bruising primary fight with Clinton, she said, and the well-known series of controversies that started with the comments of Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, it is not a big surprise that he’s showing weakness among independent voters.

For all of their potential with independents, both McCain and Obama have liabilities that have become obvious in recent weeks. Obama has had the embarrassments with his old church, which ultimately forced him to leave it; nagging rumors about whether he’s a Muslim (he’s not); and symbolic questions about whether he refused to wear a flag pin (he wears one now). And the Pew survey found a plurality of independent voters, 43 percent, thought Obama wasn’t tough enough on foreign policy.

But McCain has endured a series of embarrassing disclosures about lobbyists in high positions in his campaign, which have made it harder to maintain his “reformer” image. And he has his association with Bush, which analysts say will be a major disadvantage given independent voters’ dissatisfaction with Bush’s record.

“He starts out with this anchor that he’s got to overcome,” Dowd, now a founding partner of the international communications firm ViaNovo, said of McCain. “It’s not just about Iraq. It’s about the economy, Katrina, a mismanaged administration.”

Not all independent voters are actually up for grabs. Most lean toward one party or the other, according to surveys, and the percentage of actual “swing voters” is usually in the single digits. But as close as the last two presidential elections have been, even a small share of the voters can make a big difference.

And now, it will become a state-by-state contest, a factor that was obvious from the itinerary for Obama’s economic tour, which included the swing states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri. “You can’t just look at the national polls. . . . You have to look at them state by state,” said Democratic strategist Michael Feldman, who worked on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and hasn’t been involved with any of the presidential campaigns this year.

At the moment, several of those polls should give the Obama campaign cause for alarm, too. In Quinnipiac University polls last month, McCain led Obama among independents, 45 percent to 36 percent in Florida and 48 percent to 34 percent in Ohio, contributing to McCain’s slight leads in both states.

And SurveyUSA found Obama had a slim lead over McCain in Missouri this month and was tied with him in New Mexico last month — but not among independents, who preferred McCain by double-digit margins in both states. The only thing that saved Obama in these early polls was the fact that there were so many more self-identified Democratic voters than Republican ones.

Obama seems to be doing better in Iowa, where a Rasmussen Reports survey last week found he led McCain among independents 44 percent to 29 percent, a factor that contributed to his overall lead of seven percentage points.

Picking the Right Issues

Nationally, although Obama has taken a slight overall lead over McCain since he locked down the nomination, neither candidate has a huge edge. So they will have to find specific issues that can help them address independent voters’ concerns.

On most issues, independents lean toward the Democrats more than the Republicans. That’s certainly true on the Iraq War, where most independents, like Democrats, favor a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops. And a survey earlier this month by Rasmussen found independent, or “unaffiliated,” voters preferred the Democrats on seven out of 10 issues, including the economy, ethics, the war, domestic issues such as health care and education, and even immigration.

The Republicans prevailed only on taxes and, narrowly, abortion; national security was a tie. One warning sign to both parties: The most popular answer independents gave on ethics and immigration, when asked which party they trusted, was “not sure.”

Courting the Independents

Split on the Presidential Race: Click Here to View Chart

There are some differences in emphasis. In a National Public Radio poll in February, independent voters expressed deeper concern than party-affiliated voters about energy and gas prices and controlling taxes and spending. The last finding suggests McCain could make some headway with his emphasis on fighting “pork barrel” spending and eliminating earmarks, although Obama could also gain some traction as he questions whether McCain could really pay for his tax cuts by eliminating earmarks, a claim many fiscal experts dispute.

Independents said they cared about the economy and jobs about as much as Democrats did, but they were less concerned about the Iraq War and health care and more concerned about national security and illegal immigration than were Democrats.

“It looks like independents are more populist and nationalist than Democrats,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. Obama has sounded more populist themes — blaming corporate tax breaks and trade agreements for the economic crisis and calling for a so-called windfall profits tax on oil companies — while McCain has made more of a nationalistic pitch, especially on the need for U.S. troops to succeed in Iraq, he said.

“Each of the candidates appeals to a segment of what’s important to independents,” said Galston, who now studies political polarization. “The perfect candidate for independents this year would be a populist nationalist.”

By their nature, though, most independents will weigh the balance of each candidate’s positions on the issues. In a comprehensive survey of independent voters last year by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, most voters said they considered themselves independents because they voted on issues, not the party line, and because they voted for “candidates, not parties.” Many also said they agree with Democrats on some issues and Republicans on others.

The Role of the Record

Since it’s the general themes that most voters remember, both nominees also will have to find the broad narrative that’s persuasive enough to close the sale.

McCain’s best bet, Republicans say, is to talk up his lengthy history of defying his party and building bipartisan coalitions to work on major legislation, from immigration to campaign finance to climate change. Even though these are precisely the issues that make the party’s conservative base most suspicious of McCain, they believe he has won over enough of those voters that he can make his maverick years a selling point again. “No one has shown less partisanship and more independence from his party than Sen. McCain,” said Smith, the moderate Republican senator from Oregon. “That’s just a fact.”

Who They Are: Click Here to View Chart

McCain is already going all out to remind voters of that side of his record. On the night of Obama’s victory speech, McCain’s campaign e-mailed reporters a list of his “party unity” scores from CQ’s vote studies for his entire congressional career, arguing that his departures from the party line are a “far better measure of bipartisan leadership” than how often he voted with Bush.

At his low points, McCain voted with his party just 67 percent of the time in 2001 — the year after he lost the Republican presidential primary to Bush — and in 1986, his last year in the House before moving on to the Senate.

“I think the best argument McCain can make is that he has a record of change,” said Terry Nelson, who served as the national political director for Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and was McCain’s campaign manager before he resigned in a staff shake-up last year. “He’s been able to reach across the aisle to Democrats, and independents tend to like that.”

Courting the Independents

One problem for McCain is that independent voters could easily decide that bucking his party on issues such as campaign finance is less important than his support for his party on its unpopular Iraq and economic policies. “It’s true that McCain has had some things to say about climate change and torture and so forth. But those aren’t really the big voting issues this year,” said Galston.

McCain and his supporters could easily get tripped up highlighting his independence while trying to reassure a Republican base that never totally trusted him, according to Democratic Rep. Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania. “They’re trying to have it both ways,” said Altmire. “They’re trying to say, ‘Well, he wasn’t on the right side before, but he’s on the right side now.’ And then they’re trying to say, ‘Look how many times he’s gone against his party.’ Those two messages don’t work together.”

Still, McCain’s maverick record could be a critical selling point in the race against Obama. The Illinois senator has worked with Republicans on relatively non-controversial issues; he and Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana co-authored a 2006 law to help keep shoulder-fired missiles and other weapons away from terrorists, and he and GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma co-wrote another law that created a public database of federal spending.

But Obama has no real history of defusing major partisan fights in the Senate — unlike McCain, one of the organizers of the “Gang of 14,” the bipartisan group of centrist senators that averted a showdown over judicial nomination filibusters three years ago.

“He can say, ‘Oh, I’ll fight for you; I’ll stand up to the special interests,’ etc. But I know the one guy who’s got the welts,” said GOP Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, one of the most critical swing states this year. That’s one of the reasons McCain has seethed at Obama’s attempts to criticize his proposals on how to address climate change. “I’ve had hearings, I have fought the administration, tooth and nail, on this issue,” McCain said at a news conference in Miami two weeks ago. “I have fought as hard as I can to make my constituents, fellow citizens of the state of Arizona and this country, aware of the threat to our planet that climate change poses.

“I know of no record that Sen. Obama has on any aspect of this issue — any involvement, any legislation,” McCain said. Now that they’re on the campaign trail, of course, neither one has much involvement. Neither McCain nor Obama showed up two weeks ago for the Senate’s unsuccessful attempt to move forward on climate change legislation.

Democrats say Obama will have plenty of other strengths to work with. His supporters think he’ll be helped by the Democrats’ advantage on issues with independent voters, and they believe his youth and newness to Washington will be assets, not liabilities.

“I think independents are looking for a type of person, but they’re also looking for new ideas” on national security, the economy, energy and climate change, said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Obama’s home-state colleague and one of his closest allies. “At his age, with his vision, I think independents will be drawn to him and what he has to offer.”

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an Obama supporter from a crucial swing state, said independent voters will latch on to Obama precisely because he’s the new guy. “Independents are independents because they’re sick of all the political junk and all the political infighting,” said McCaskill. “Barack sees that so clearly. He hasn’t been here so long that he’s been ground down by the game.”

Jarding, the Democratic strategist, said Obama is less likely to suffer for his lack of a Senate record than McCain will suffer because he has one. Already, for example, Obama is hammering McCain for voting against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 but saying he’ll extend them now. And McCain has had to explain why he voted against federal aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (He thought the bill was full of wasteful spending that had little to do with hurricane relief.)

“It’s a whole lot tougher to defend a record than it is to defend a lack of a record,” said Jarding. “It’s a lot tougher to defend a vote against a popular bill where a third of it affected your state in a bad way.”

Obama has had a few significant votes against his party, such as his vote last year for a Republican proposal to require greater disclosure of earmarks. But few of his campaign proposals actually challenge the prevailing views of his party, as Bill Clinton did on issues such as crime and welfare during his first presidential campaign. “If you compare the campaign he’s running to the kind of campaign Bill Clinton ran in 1992, there’s no comparison,” said Galston.

Still, Obama may be under less pressure to redefine Democratic policies, since it is the Republican Party that is on the defensive now. And some political scientists say it would be a mistake to minimize the power of a charismatic personality and a good speech, even if Obama doesn’t have a lengthy Senate record or a substantial history of challenging the party.

Courting the Independents

“A lot of politics is capturing the imagination of voters,” said Michael P. Federici of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., arguing that President Ronald Reagan inspired young conservatives who stayed with the Republican Party for many years. With Obama, he said, “you’ve got a guy who’s charismatic, and in a lot of cases that trumps policy. But in a lot of cases, that also has an impact on policy, because they’ll follow the candidate and then go along with the policies.”

Inspiring the Skeptics

In some ways, the fight for independent votes may not look much different from the fight to mobilize the partisans.

Obama’s constant reminders of the Bush record might seem like a purely partisan strategy, but he has also been casting it in practical terms, a nod to the pragmatic views of many independents. “It is not left or right, liberal or conservative, to say that we have tried it their way for eight long years. And it has failed,” Obama said in Raleigh, N.C., last week. “It is time to try something new. It is time for change.”

Obama also has been reminding voters that McCain supports private savings accounts for retirement, one of the least popular initiatives Bush tried to push in his second term. McCain, meanwhile, charges that Obama would raise taxes, unilaterally renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and negotiate unconditionally with Iranian leaders. He even told Fox News last week that an Obama presidency would be like a second term for President Jimmy Carter.

Those are both deliberate strategies, according to Galston, of trying to make the other candidate look so far out of the mainstream that independents would never vote for him. He compared the McCain vs. Obama contest to a wrestling match, in which “each will try to shove the other out of the ring.”

There may still be unconventional twists, though, that would have more direct appeal to independents. One of them is McCain’s proposal to appear with Obama at joint “town hall meetings.” Obama has expressed interest in the idea, though he prefers a different format than McCain has proposed. Top officials from both campaigns have been trading offers but haven’t been able to reach an agreement.

It’s not an entirely new campaign tactic, said Dowd, since “the campaign that proposes multiple debates is usually the one that knows it’s in the weakest position.”

Others, however, say the joint appearances could spark the interest of independent voters who might otherwise tune the election out. “It would be unique in presidential elections,” said Nelson. “A lot of independent voters, just by their nature, tend to be less engaged than the partisans. But this kind of event would be so different that it would probably draw people in.”

Whether the joint appearances happen or not, some Democratic strategists say Obama will have to get more specific about his policy ideas as he campaigns around the country, as a further appeal to the practical-minded independents.

Obama has been doing that to some degree. He walked through some of his economic plans in his North Carolina speech, including a second stimulus package, an overhaul of the tax code, a “foreclosure prevention fund” and a “Credit Bill of Rights” to ban practices like rate increases on existing debt and interest charges on late fees. And this week, he’s scheduled to talk about his long-term plans for helping the United States adjust to global competition.

But the general arc of Obama’s career has been to move away from detailed policy proposals. Ever since his crushing defeat in a bid for Congress in 2000, Obama has put more emphasis on broad, inspirational themes, arguing that Democrats always put out 10-point plans and they’re not necessarily ideas that move voters. That’s partly the influence of strategist David Axelrod, who taught Obama to think in terms of people’s stories rather than just policy, according to the biography “Obama: From Promise to Power,” by Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell.

But that attitude probably will have to change if Obama wants to win the independents, said Jarding. “I’m not saying he has to show that he’s mastered the intricacies of every policy,” he said. “He just has to show people, ‘Here’s how I’m going to solve the problem. Here’s how we’re going to pay for it.’”

Courting the Independents

Over the next five months, the tie among independent voters will be broken by the candidate who won’t just survive the attacks, but will also define himself in a way that inspires some of the most skeptical voters in America.

For Obama, the next five months will be about proving to independents that he’s not all style and no substance and that he really does share the values of middle America. For McCain, they will be about convincing the independents that he has crossed the aisle on issues that matter.

And getting them to ignore that man who still lives in the White House.

FOR FURTHER READING: Obama’s record, CQ Weekly, p. 124, 2007 CQ Weekly, p. 218; McCain’s record, CQ Weekly, p. 354, 2006 CQ Weekly, p. 1220; public opinion and the Iraq War, 2007 CQ Weekly, p. 1070; midterm election, 2006 Almanac, p. 17-3; Bush re-election, 2004 Almanac, p. 18-3; GOP takeover election, 1994 Almanac, p. 561.