ELECTION 2004

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This year, the Bush and Kerry campaigns agree: There are fewer undecided voters than in any recent election. The polarization of the country has resulted in likely voters choosing whom to vote for earlier than ever before.

Brenda Daily of Owensboro, Ky., is one of the remaining undecideds - unsure on Iraq, on the economy, on which candidate would be a better leader.

"I'm not for war. I back the guys now that they're there. But I don't know for sure why we should have gone there," said Daily, who works in a hospital gift shop.

She and her husband can pay their bills. But both President Bush and John Kerry, she said, "are rich rich. I'm not rich rich. ... I have a problem with them having so much money."

Polls show that about 4 percent to 6 percent of likely voters nationally are undecided. The Ohio Poll found that only 1 percent is undecided. In battleground states such as Ohio, undecided people deemed likely to vote probably have been called by both campaigns, asked what issues they care about and then deluged with mail - specifically aimed at them and focused on the issues they cite.

"If a (undecided) suburban woman in Cincinnati is tremendously interested in the balanced budget, we will have someone call her up and tell her our absolutely superior plan for the balanced budget," said Jim DeMay, who runs the Democratic Party's campaign in Ohio to elect Kerry.

Bob Paduchik, who runs Bush's campaign in Ohio, even invited two undecided neighbors over to his Columbus living room on the night Bush gave his convention speech. He plied them with chicken wings and chips and, he said, won two more votes for Bush. "I'm a pretty persuasive guy," he said.

Who are they?

The number of undecided likely voters at this point in a campaign is usually two or three times what it is now. Observers say the Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war and the loss of jobs have reminded voters that politics not only matters, it can be a life-or-death issue.

Broadly speaking, there are two groups of undecided voters.

The first might be called the conflicted. They've studied the two men and just don't know.

"I'm worried about Bush and his quagmire in Iraq, but I don't think Kerry has the solution either," said Frank Labmeier, 85, a retired auto dealership manager from Green Township.

He reads blogs, watches The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel and knows the details of each candidate's background and stances. But he still hasn't made up his mind.

The second, more plentiful kind of undecideds are those who simply haven't been following the election campaign.

"Those people tend to have one thing in common: They tend to be very uninterested in politics," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics in Akron. "In a campaign that's been going full-throttle for nine months, that's probably their one dominant characteristic."

Key tool: the telephone

The campaigns use a lot of high-tech stuff to find undecided voters. But in truth, much of it comes down to phone calls. In Ohio the Democratic campaign makes 30,000 a night; the Republicans claim to have made more than 1 million.

Reaching them via TV ads might work - depending on where the ads go. A July survey from ad agency Initiative found undecideds were drawn to cartoons and talk shows and shied away from dramas and news.

Experts say undecideds might wait for a signal - a debate, a particular ad, even a sign of momentum. It may be the price of gasoline on their way to vote.

"It looks like it's going to go down to the wire," said Labmeier of his decision. "I'm going to be going into the voting booth holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils."

Pollsters' take

Among likely voters, who are the undecideds?

Demographically, the presidential campaigns and pollsters have a good idea who they aren't. African-Americans, for example, overwhelmingly support John Kerry. Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly back President Bush.

The undecideds themselves are slightly harder to pinpoint.

"There's no major demographic category that really hits you over the head," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. "In some way, they're a microcosm of everybody else."

That said, the numbers are slightly higher for the following groups:

• Independents. Not surprisingly, people who consider themselves independents, as opposed to Democrats or Republicans, are much more likely to be undecided.

• Poorer, less educated and younger people tend to be more undecided. Those groups tend to follow politics less, read newspapers less and vote less than their counterparts.

• Women. Pollster Frank Luntz told Ohio Republicans last month that an Ohio undecided voter is likely to be a 25- to 39-year-old white woman, conservative fiscally but moderate socially. She knows someone who lost a job or she might be worried she'll lose hers.

Women tend to view most conservatives as too harsh. The phrase and philosophy of "compassionate conservatism" is aimed at them.

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E-mail cweiser@gannett.com. Gregory Korte contributed.