WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (AFP) - While the US presidential candidates geared to face off in a nationally televised debate Thursday, their campaigns pressed their trench warfare state by state where George W. Bush seemed to be making good headway.
For Democrat John Kerry, the 90-minute debate in Florida was a crucial chance to counter charges he was weak on defense and corner Bush on Iraq. For the president it was an opportunity to consolidate his five- to eight-point advance in the polls.
But in any case, reaction to the debate will set the endgame strategy for the remaining 33 days of the campaign, helping the two sides decide in which states to allocate their dwindling time and advertising dollars.
They will be crunching numbers in an idiosyncratic system that decides the presidency not on the national vote, but by 538 electoral votes apportioned among the states and garnered in separate, mostly winner-take-all contests.
And by several measures the electoral chessboard appeared to be stacking up in favor of Bush, even if analysts cautioned the situation could remain volatile right up until the November 2 ballot.
Polls showed the Republican running strong in several states that went Democratic in the 2000 election, while narrowing Kerry's field of "battleground" states where the Massachussets senator hoped to dig into Bush's column.
An AFP analysis of state polls showed Bush assured of at least 210 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win, while Kerry had 186. Thirteen states with a total of 142 electors were toss-ups, holding the keys to the White House.
Of these, five states with a 41 electors leaned toward Bush, while two with 38 electors leaned toward Kerry. The others, totaling 63 electors, were either virtual dead heats or subject to contradictory poll findings.
Bush, who won four years ago by five electoral votes, held a small lead in at least one previously Democratic state, Iowa, and was battling neck-and-neck in five others: Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon and Maine.
He was also making a run at Kerry in Michigan and even New Jersey, which has not voted Republican in a presidential election since 1988 and went for Democrat Al Gore four years ago by nearly 16 points.
While Democrats brushed off any suggestion they could lose New Jersey, they were worried enough to schedule appearances in the eastern state earlier this week by Kerry's vice presidential running mate John Edwards.
The Kerry camp has just about written off any chance of winning the midwestern state of Missouri, where it once thought that job losses gave it a well-spring of anti-Bush discontent it could tap.
The challenger has also reportedly pulled back advertising time he had bought in the western state of Arizona as well as Arkansas and Lousiana in the south where he had early hopes of making inroads on Bush's turf.
The pviotal southeastern state of Florida, which gave Bush his victory over vice president Al Gore in 2000 after a hotly disputed recount decided by the US Supreme Court, was still deadlocked.
But overall, Bush's aides said they had Kerry and the Democrats on their heels. "They're spending a lot of their resources just keeping the Gore states," chief Bush strategist Matthew Dowd told the New York Times.
The Republican surge in several states coincides with national polls showing Bush gaining the upper hand over Kerry on most major issues: terrorism, Iraq and even the economy that had been his soft spot.
Kerry switched tactics two weeks ago to take the focus off the economy and concentrate his campaign on criticism of Bush's handling of Iraq. Ironically, polls show that bread-and-butter issues meant more in the showdown states.
In a Gallup survey reported Tuesday, 38 percent of those interviewed in those states said the economy was the most critical issue in their choice. Twenty-eight percent chose terrorism and only 17 percent said Iraq.