Wooing New Hampshire's Undeclared

The guy in the purple "I'm a health care voter" shirt stands up to ask a question at a John McCain town hall in Exeter, N.H. "I am embarrassed by our current administration," he begins, before he is interrupted by applause, "Why can't this country get Osama bin Laden? I need closure on that." He was also concerned about Iraq: "We've turned that country into hell." Though he was addressing McCain, he told me later that he had wanted to present these thoughts to both of the candidates he was considering supporting in the primary on Tuesday — McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

The importance of independent or "undeclared" voters in the New Hampshire primary is an article of faith among both pundits and politicos. Yet the existence of voters who are actually making the choice between these two politically divergent figures has taken observers and both campaigns somewhat by surprise.

University of New Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala estimates these "McBamas" make up only 3% of the electorate. As rare as unicorns, perhaps, but just as fascinating, and potentially significant. While an Obama adviser described those split between the two as "a small sliver of the universe," the campaign is paying attention to it, as "everybody is very conscious of what happened to Bill Bradley in 2000" — when independents abandoned the moderate Democrat and helped give McCain a victory. Amy Pellerin, 38, a speech pathologist from Boscawen, N.H., was one of them. In 2004, she liked McCain so much that she wrote his name in. But this year, Obama attracts her more. "It sounds silly but I like the hopefulness and the genuine quality to his talking, she says. "I don't know, he just wants things to be different," said Pellerin, as she left Obama's rally in Nashua Friday.

Polls indicate, at the moment, that most undeclared voters in New Hampshire will vote in the Democratic primary, and that they will probably vote for Obama. But McCain's campaign claims that it needs only a small portion of those voters to seal their victory over Mitt Romney. Currently neck-and-neck in the polls, McCain and Romney are expected to split the Republican vote almost evenly. "A thousand of [independents] could vote for Obama," says McCain media strategist Mark McKinnon. "We only need three." McKinnon is a unicorn himself, having expressed his admiration for Obama last year — and reportedly even hinting that he couldn't be a part of a campaign that ran against him in a general election.

McCain tried to lock one up one of those undecided McBamas at the town hall in Exeter. In responding to the voter asking about Iraq, McCain didn't stray from his usual answers on the topics of bin Laden and Iraq. He will "follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell." As for Iraq being hell-on-earth...America will stay there, he said, for as long as it takes, even if — as he put it later — "that's one hundred years, one thousand years, ten thousand years or until the earth collapses under global climate change."

The questioner said later he was satisfied with the Senator's answer: "I hate this war, I hate what we've done to that country, but he might be right." Such equanimity in the face of an issue that's divided the country and isolated the President makes little sense to some who view presidential races as stark choices between ideologies, which includes the candidates. McCain himself, while complimentary of Obama, has trouble coming up with what might bind himself to the young Illinois senator in voters' minds: "He's an attractive candidate, he's getting across the message, 'Let's work together and get something done.'" He says that they are both interested in crossing party boundaries, and that he admires Obama's decision to avoid any Bush-baiting in his Iowa caucuses victory speech.

When pressed on how McCain might tap into the thirst for inspiration that clearly propels Obama voters, his aides turn Romneyian and rational, arguing that Obama has no experience, he hasn't ever made a difference in the Senate, and he's never taken a political risk. The same advisers can also be dismissive of Obama's massive crowds, calling the legions that show up "teeny boppers," and implying that they're attracted to the Illinois Senator's star quality, not his politics. But McCain is a victim of that same mixed blessing. Al Davenport, a 66-year-old salesman from Bedford, New Hampshire, went to see McCain, and liked him — but he says that Obama will get his vote. He "reminds me of Kennedy...And I like that he's bringing out the young people, it was great to see them in line."

Asked what appeal he'd make to an independent voter trying to decide between the two of them, McCain reacts with shocked straightforwardness, "Why, national security, of course." Obama strategist David Axelrod is equally firm about what, to him, seems like an easy choice: "Whatever appeal Senator McCain might have, I think the war is a troubling thing for a lot of people."

The war is troubling to New Hampshire voters — 31% of Democrats call it their most important issue, and 13% of Republicans. But the existence of this subgroup of McBamas suggests that some voters remain open-minded about different solutions to Iraq. Some voters are able to put aside the war entirely in evaluating candidates. John Weaver, a former McCain adviser, explains that "for the less partisan voter, presidential campaigns are about character, and judgment, and trustworthiness."

Mary Jane Merrit, a retired schoolteacher and undecided voter in Haverford, has a son in Iraq. Merrit says "bringing the war to an end" is her number one issue. But at a McCain town hall, she says that his commitment to continuing the war for as long as necessary, while a cause for concern, doesn't matter to her as much as character and — this might sound familiar — change. "What I like about McCain is that I don't think he could lie," she says, adding that she is also looking for someone who doesn't "represent the old politics." On that front, however, she's leaning toward Obama.

So if character is what binds the voters trying to choose between McCain and Obama, what does that say about the prospect for a general contest between the two? McCain, after all, might not have any more success challenging Obama's lack of "national security experience" than Hillary Clinton has. Instead, his campaign will need to figure out the key to one other major difference between Obama and McCain: while McCain is leading in the Republican primary polls, Obama appears to be leading a movement.

- with reporting by Karen Tumulty and Jay Newton-Small/Nashua