Mushy middle is hard to reach

Washington - They are the most fickle voters, and potentially the most powerful. Thus, with party nominations secure, John McCain and Barack Obama are pushing toward the centre to win over the "mushy middle".

They are a complex chunk of people likely to decide the presidential election but difficult to reach and hard to please.

"Yes, we can!", the chant that won Obama the presumptive Democratic nomination, is not convincing them. Nothing much is, from either candidate.

The "mushy middle" are not uniformly conservative or liberal, and they do not fit strict Republican or Democratic orthodoxy. They are not typically engaged in politics, and they do not care much about the campaign. And like so many others, they are extraordinarily pessimistic.

"To me, it's not about the party, it's about who is the best person for the job," says Pam Robinett, 47, from Wellington, Kansas, who always votes. Then again, "they'll all lie, cheat and steal to get what they want."

Talk about a tough sell.

"The country's going to go to hell in a hand basket with this election," seethes James Nauman, 55, from Lutz, Florida. "I don't think Obama's qualified, and McCain's another Bush. Neither of them really have impressed me."

'The centre always matters'

Both will try.

A recent AP-Yahoo News poll finds that 15% call themselves moderates and are not solidly supporting a candidate. More than half of this still-persuadable middle comprises independents.

"The centre always matters," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Centre. "It matters more this year. Both candidates were nominated because they appealed to independents and moderates, so how these voters make a choice between Obama and McCain will be even more decisive."

For now, at least, the race is competitive and the rivals' bases are mostly intact.

The survey, conducted by Knowledge Networks, found that three in four Republicans and three in four conservatives are backing McCain, while Obama has nearly identical support among Democrats and liberals.

So, both are tacking away from their party's ideological ends to appeal to this unpredictable swath in between.

McCain is moving away from the unpopular President George W Bush if not from the Republican Party itself. He emphasises bipartisanship while pressing two issues that resonate strongly with voters of all stripes.

He "stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming" one McCain commercial says. Another promotes a "bipartisan plan to lower prices at the (gasoline) pump, reduce dependence on foreign oil through domestic drilling and champion energy alternatives."

Kingmakers in American politics

Obama, for his part, broke from the left by backing new rules for the government's terrorist eavesdropping programme, straddling a Supreme Court ruling that struck down a gun ban and objecting to the justices' decision outlawing executions of child rapists. He even quoted conservative hero Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify" line in reacting to North Korea's latest agreement on nuclear weapons.

His leadoff campaign commercial cast him as the embodiment of the centre and pitched family values, patriotism, "welfare to work" and lower taxes. It stressed "love of country" and "working hard without making excuses" - echoes of former President Bill Clinton.

McCain naturally may be better positioned to capture more of the middle; he came out of the Republican centre to dispatch liberal Rudy Giuliani on his left and conservative Mitt Romney and Christian evangelical Mike Huckabee on his right. Obama emerged from the party's left to topple the more centrist Hillary Rodham Clinton.

However, Obama and McCain both won their nominations with the support of independents, moderates and crossovers from the opposite party.

Some 39% of voters called themselves Democratic, 29% Republican, and 32% independent in the June 13-23 survey, part of a continuing study tracking opinions of the same group of people over the election cycle. The overall margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

That Democratic edge suggests Obama may be less dependent on votes in the middle than McCain.

Still, the likeliest path to the White House cuts through the centre of the electorate.

"They're the kingmakers in American politics," said Matt Bennett, a Democratic operative at the centrist Third Way policy group. "They're the people who decide elections."

Who exactly are these power-wielding voters?

They look much like the general population. They reflect the same frustration with the status quo. A significant majority has a low opinion of Bush and Congress. They have more favourable impressions of Democrats than Republicans. Many are feeling the economic pinch. They want troops to return from Iraq as soon as possible.

Like the broad electorate, they rank gasoline prices and the US economy as their top worries, followed by health care, Social Security, taxes and education. Terrorism and Iraq are lower.

But there are important differences.

Compared with far-right and far-left voters, this group tends to be more Hispanic, more Roman Catholic than the left and more secular than the right. They are more likely to be married with children and live in far-flung suburbs or rural areas. They also tend to be less educated.

They are not nearly as motivated as those who identify with political parties or ideologies. Fewer are registered to vote.

"These are the most disengaged voters," said Ron Shaiko, a public policy specialist at Dartmouth College. "There's a point at which they're going to engage, and it's not clear who will win when they do."

Nearly half view McCain favourably, while slightly more than a third see Obama positively. Still, the candidates are little-known to a quarter, and many have little enthusiasm for either.

"I like McCain more because I'm concerned about Obama. I question his judgments," says Tony Miller, 39 and a left-leaning moderate from Springfield, Illinois. Conversely, Susan Carroll, 43, a moderate Democrat from Garrettsville, Ohio, says Obama's "the better choice" because "I honestly think that McCain is anti-woman."

This voting group's views cross some of the usual lines.

For instance, they overwhelmingly favour abortion rights and legal rights for same-sex couples, typically Democratic and liberal positions. But they also overwhelmingly say cutting taxes should be a high priority, typically a Republican and conservative refrain.

These voters say they are far less interested in cultural issues and far more interested in bread-and-butter subjects like health care and Social Security, the nation's government operated pension system.

"All are a few points from the ideological centre of the country, and they tend to be fiscally conservative and socially tolerant," said Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster in New York.

- AP