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It's Crunch Time

Sen. Barack Obama went bowling in Altoona, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton waxed nostalgic about learning to shoot behind her family's cottage on Lake Winola.

Milt Tarshish of Bala Cynwyd (left) and Dave Deuschle of Havertown climbed a tree to see Barack Obama at the Wynnewood train station yesterday.
Milt Tarshish of Bala Cynwyd (left) and Dave Deuschle of Havertown climbed a tree to see Barack Obama at the Wynnewood train station yesterday.Read moreSARAH J. GLOVER / Inquirer Staff Photographer

Sen. Barack Obama went bowling in Altoona, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton waxed nostalgic about learning to shoot behind her family's cottage on Lake Winola.

Obama gave a soaring speech on race as he tried to explain his former pastor's inflammatory sermons, and later defended his own comment about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians. Clinton had to explain her false claims that she dodged sniper fire on a 1996 visit to Bosnia. And the two of them argued over minor differences on free-trade treaties and job losses, health care and energy policy.

Much has happened in the seven weeks Pennsylvania has been at the center of the Democratic presidential campaign, and Obama, helped by his omnipresent TV ads, has whittled away at Clinton's once-formidable lead in state polls. But a wide range of scenarios exists for Tuesday's vote, from blowouts to cliff-hangers.

The consensus among political leaders and analysts: Clinton will win, but perhaps not by enough.

Anything less than a double-digit victory could ratify the perception that Obama is the inevitable Democratic nominee, causing superdelegates to flock to him and party leaders to demand the contest end.

No matter what the vote, Clinton will still trail in the overall delegate count Wednesday morning - so her best hope is that a healthy victory in Pennsylvania, coupled with last month's in Ohio, would raise significant doubts about Obama's ability to carry big swing states in the fall. That would convince party leaders to look for answers in the next round of primaries May 6 in North Carolina and Indiana, allowing Clinton to continue.

Recent Pennsylvania polls put Clinton's lead at an average of 5.6 percentage points, and, though the margin has shrunk, each of the candidates has much the same base of support as seven weeks ago.

Clinton has the advantage among women, older voters, Catholics, union households, and white voters with high school educations making less than $35,000. Obama leads among younger voters, African Americans, Democrats with incomes over $75,000, and liberals.

Obama holds a wide lead in Philadelphia and a narrower one in its suburban counties, while Western Pennsylvania favors Clinton by as much as 2-1.

"The election has stabilized, with no movement among any of the big voter groups in the last week," said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College Poll. "It's a battle of the east versus the west and a battle of defined demographics, and everybody is trying to figure out what will make the difference."

Two things that could: the 15 percent of voters who tell pollsters they remain undecided, and the roughly 325,000 newly registered Democrats in the state, a mixture of first-time voters and those switching affiliation to participate in the closed primary.

In previous races this year, undecided voters have broken toward Clinton. An estimated 24 percent of newly registered Democrats in Pennsylvania are younger than 35, a group that has overwhelmingly supported Obama.

Democratic strategist Neil Oxman said that most polls do not sample enough younger voters because they usually are not a factor in primaries. Obama changes the dynamic, he said.

"If all of those kids who registered come out, he could steal the election," said the Philadelphia-based Oxman, who is not working in the race. "And if everybody over 60 votes, she could blow him away. Each of them has enough voters to win this thing."

With seven weeks on the ground in Pennsylvania, with more than 150 stops by both candidates and their families, the race has felt more like a battle for governor than for president, said Ed Mitchell, a longtime Democratic media strategist from Wilkes-Barre.

"It would be very hard to find someone here who hasn't been influenced by all that has gone on," Mitchell said. "No one can say they don't know enough about them."

By the time the Pennsylvania race is finished, Obama will have spent about $9.3 million on television ads to $3.2 million for Clinton, according to industry sources. That onslaught, coupled with a six-day bus tour of the state and an endorsement by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, helped him narrow the gap with Clinton.

Then April 11, Obama's remarks at a San Francisco fund-raiser - in which he said that small-town Pennsylvanians are "bitter" and "cling" to guns, religion and bigotry out of frustration at their economic misfortune - came to light. The furor, fanned by Clinton, who repeatedly called Obama an elitist, is credited with stopping his momentum in the polls.

To carry the state, Clinton needs to pull off impressive margins, perhaps double digits, in the southwestern and northeastern parts of the state, said Jon Delano, a public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

But on election night, Delano said, he will be focusing on what the exit polls say about women in the Philadelphia suburbs. Will they vote their gender and vote for Clinton, or their class and vote for Obama?

"You have a real interesting crosscurrent at work in suburban Philadelphia," Delano said.

Former Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street said that Clinton had done a better job in the city of "getting to a variety of constituencies." She campaigned in North and West Philadelphia, while Obama did not go into city neighborhoods, except for a photo-op of him buying gourmet food in the Italian Market.

"Clinton really helped herself by going to West Philadelphia and discussing issues of direct importance to city residents, including violence, among other things," said Street, a Clinton supporter. "There is an undercurrent of concern that Sen. Obama didn't put more direct time in the city, although it doesn't seem to be having much impact on his supporters' enthusiasm."

John Vatavuk, the Democratic chairman of Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania, said that Obama's comments about guns didn't seem to have changed minds in his county.

"He's run tons and tons of TV ads and radio ads here," said Vatavuk, a Clinton supporter. "He gets on and preaches he's not connected with the oil companies and the lobbyists, and people want to hear that stuff. . . . It's starting to take its toll. Sometimes people want change for its own sake."

He believes that Clinton will carry Somerset County and the state but frets that it will not be by a big-enough margin.

"She's going to be lucky to eke out a victory in Pennsylvania by a few percentage points," said Vatavuk, a county commissioner.