OGELSVILLE, Pa - After months of campaigning, millions of dollars and even a last-minute revelation about George W. Bush's drunken-driving record, the presidential campaign is likely to be decided in suburbs like this in perhaps five key states, where voters say their final decision will be based on everything from a gut feeling to a hot-button issue.
A new round of polls across the nation came to the same conclusion: The race is within the margin of error, too close to call, and could turn on anything from the weather on Election Day to the size of the turnout in key precincts. Bush is counting on a heavy vote from core Republicans, who claim to be more energized than Democrats. Al Gore is counting on union members, blacks, and older Americans.
''This is a hotly contested race between two centrist candidates equally acceptable or unacceptable to the electorate,'' said John Zogby, a pollster who, like most people in his profession, declined to predict the outcome.
With Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, possibly swinging the vote in a number of states, Bush and Gore were fine-tuning their final-days strategy on the fly, continuing to focus on five key states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, and Missouri.
The contest is so close in so many places that another political analyst, Charles Cook, declared last week that 13 states remained toss-ups and that another 16 were not considered certain for either candidate, leaving an extraordinarily broad swath of the country up for grabs so late in the campaign.
Indeed, both men were campaigning during the final days in places they hadn't expected. Bush showed up Friday night in West Virginia, normally a reliably Democratic state, followed quickly by Gore yesterday morning. Although the state has only five of the needed 270 electoral votes, the candidates seem to think the smallest state could make the difference.
Gore, in particular, has had to spend far more time than his campaign had hoped shoring up the Democratic base. In recent days, Gore has visited states that once had been presumed to be reliably Democratic, including Iowa, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota and Illinois. In addition to his West Virginia visit yesterday, Gore appeared once again in his home state of Tennessee.
Bush, too, is reconfiguring his strategy. He plans to spend today traveling throughout Florida, a Republican-leaning state that he had hoped to carry easily, partly because his brother Jeb is the governor. At the same time, Bush is hoping that the revelation Thursday that he was arrested for drunken driving in Maine won't hurt his chances. Bush aides said they believed the arrest would not hurt the governor, and that it might in fact help him if the public believes the story was leaked with the help of the Gore campaign.
Gore aides insist they had nothing to do with the story, which a Maine television station broke with the help of a Democratic activist.
Absent from the list of battleground states is Ohio, which the Gore campaign appears to have ceded to Bush by moving much of its advertising money out of the state.
The candidates locked in their spending for a final round of campaign commercials, flooding the airwaves in those states with a mix of upbeat biographical spots and last-minute attacks. Independent groups ranging from the National Rifle Association to groups favoring abortion rights also filled the airwaves.
Much of the final advertising is targeted at such cities as Allentown, Pennsylvania, once described in a Billy Joel song as the place where ''they're closing all the factories down.'' Allentown has prospered like much of the country during the Clinton-Gore years, but Gore doesn't get much of the credit. A recent national Time/CNN poll found that two-thirds of those surveyed said they were better off than they were eight years ago, but that does not necessarily translate into support.
This Lehigh Valley region, which has bounced back from the closing of the nearby Bethlehem Steel plant, could determine whether Pennsylvania goes for Bush or Gore. This state, in turn, could determine the outcome.
In Fogelsville, a mix of farmland, suburban homes, office parks, and a brewery just west of Allentown, voters displayed either an intensity about their views of the candidates or an equally strong lack of interest.
''I would rather move to Canada than be a US citizen under Bush,'' said Larry Copes, the owner of an automotive detailing business.
But John Boisitz, a retired member of the Teamsters union, was equally adamant, saying: ''I don't like Al Gore. I think he's a liar.''
Neither Copes nor Boisitz said any particular issue had moved them to support their candidates. Instead, they said it was more a gut reaction, a level of comfort or discomfort with the candidates. Other voters, however, cited gun ownership or prescription drugs or education as a key issue.
A number of voters interviewed at random here, meanwhile, said they weren't interested and didn't plan on voting. That is in line with a prediction of a 49 percent turnout from Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.
''I'm really not happy with the choices,'' Connie Ledford, of Kutztown, Pa., said as she entered the Fogelsville post office. ''I voted for Clinton and look what it got me.''
Both the Gore and Bush campaigns believe the race is no longer about courting undecided voters, but instead is about turning out committed supporters. By some measures, the campaigns and their adjuncts - the political parties, the unions and many interest groups - will spend more money than ever to get out the vote.
Analysts said turnout is likely to be highest among older Americans and middle-class Republicans. With Bush well ahead among white men, Gore needs a strong turnout among women to win the election. Clinton won in 1996 with a 17-point lead among women; Gore leads among women by 6 or fewer percentage points, according to recent polls. That is particularly important because women vote in higher numbers than men.
''The mystery will be what is the turnout of younger undecided voters... and minority voters in urban areas,'' said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Cain said that as many as 80 percent of Americans older than 65 are likely to vote, by far the highest likely turnout of any group.
That helps to explain why Bush and Gore have spent much time focusing on issues such as prescription drugs, Social Security and Medicare. That is especially true in Pennsylvania, which has the nation's second-highest percentage of senior citizens.
But some Gore backers are concerned that the vice president's ceaseless focus on seniors could backfire.
''I have been a fan of Al Gore for as long as I have paid attention,'' said Alan Jennings, director of an Allentown antipoverty agency. ''But I'm scared to death. I recognize that Pennsylvania has the second-largest elderly population, but you would think the voting age population begins at age 65. I think the strongest suit that vice president has is the most prosperous economy of the 20th century. It shocks me that that card hasn't been played.''
Bush has a built-in advantage here thanks to the political organization of Governor Thomas Ridge, who has lamented that past GOP presidential candidates have tended to write off the state. But he said in a recent interview that Bush has committed all of the money necessary to win in Pennsylvania. If Bush loses this state and the election, analysts inevitably will question whether Bush was wise to bypass Ridge in selecting a vice presidential candidate.
With the race so close, any issue could affect the outcome, from abortion rights to gun ownership in Pennsylvania, to the intensity of the vote for US Senate candidates in Florida or Michigan.
The polls do not tell the whole story of what may happen. For example, an ABC News poll released on Friday found Bush with 48 percent, Gore with 45 percent and Nader with 3 percent.
But it is also possible that the winner of the overall vote could lose the election, which is determined by the Electoral College.
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win. Bush is way in his home state of Texas and some Western and Midwestern states, while Gore has small leads in a number of states. But except for Maine and Nebrasaka, the states award electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Thus, even if a candidate wins Pennsylvania by just one vote, he gets all of the state's 23 electoral votes.
Similarly, the national polls may underplay the Nader factor. While Nader has hovered between 3 percent to 5 percent in most surveys, he has polled as high as 10 percent in Oregon, the state where his strength is most likely to affect the race. Nader could also alter the outcome in six or more other states, including Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington and Florida.
Here in Fogelsville, where the hillsides were painted with the last flickers of fall, the intensity of the contest was matched by a recognition that that much of the arguing is over political points that may mean much in just a few days.
Even Boisitz, aformer Teamster and fervent Bush supporter, said, ''Neither one of them is going to let Social Security fail.'' Boisitz's biggest worry was that the economy is starting to enter a downward cycle, which he feared neither candidate could do much to stop.
John Aloysius Farrell of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
