Sarah Palin and her son, Trig. (flickr Sparky05)

HERSHEY, Pa. — During Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s last swing through battleground states this week, boisterous supporters cheer almost on cue when she delivers her stump speech.

Few lines get a more deep-felt roar of approval than her signature issue — support for children with disabilities.

Palin’s words strike deeper than just with parents who come to her rallies because one of their children has a disability.

Social conservatives cheer when Palin talks about the value of all children because her words are a subtle but clear signal of her staunch anti-abortion views. She talks about special-needs education in words and phrases generally associated with the anti-abortion movement, effectively reminding anti-abortion voters that she shares and supports their view.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

During a stop Sunday in Asheville, N.C., Palin told a raucous audience that she plans on “ushering in that spirit” of prioritizing children if she becomes vice president.

“John [McCain] and I have a vision of America where every innocent life counts,” Palin told a crowd at a high-school football stadium in Roanoke, Va., the next day. “Where everyone has a chance to contribute and every child is cherished. And that’s the spirit I want to bring to Washington, D.C.”

Palin, a mother of five, gave birth to her youngest son, Trig, in April. She knew he would be born with Down syndrome. On the stump, she talks about how, through prayer, she prepared herself for the challenges of welcoming the new member of her family. She tells crowds that when she and her husband, Todd Palin, saw Trig for the first time, he was “perfect” in their eyes — and now they consider him a “blessing.”

The issue of special-needs kids resonates with families eager to have a public figure so ready and able to prioritize programs for their children.

But Palin’s words appeal to many more of her supporters for what they signal. Her personal story is leavened with language regularly used by the anti-abortion movement — including phrases like “spirit” and “culture of life.” It allows her to reach the GOP’s anti-abortion base without actually talking about reproductive health issues.

Palin has spoken about her anti-abortion views publicly. During a debate in the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial campaign, Palin said she would be against abortion even in the event her daughter was raped. She said she only supports abortion in instances where the life of the mother is endangered.

During the presidential campaign, Palin has been more cautious in outlining the specifics of her beliefs.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion-rights debate agree that Palin doesn’t need to be direct. By discussing her plans for special-needs children and touching on her own story, she galvanizes the arm of the GOP base that lists abortion as a top issue. At the same time, she runs less of a risk of alienating pro-abortion rights voters.

“She is able to talk about the life issue without talking about abortion, because everybody knows her personal circumstance,” said Janice Crouse, a political commentator from Concerned Women of America, a conservative nonprofit public-policy group that opposes abortion rights.

“She is able to talk about issues just with her personal life,” Crouse said, “without having to bring up the political kind of rhetoric that people are so tired of. Instead, she talks about it from a personal standpoint, and that makes it very palatable for people.”

Palin’s strategy is not new in the anti-abortion-rights movement.

Caitlin E. Borgmann, a professor at the City University of New York’s Law School who writes the Reproductive Rights Prof blog, says “special code words” and euphemisms have served anti-abortion activists well.

After the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade in 1973, the anti-abortion movement aimed to reduce access to abortion incrementally rather than by an outright ban.

Campaigns targeted seemingly narrow goals, including laws requiring 24-hour waiting periods or parental notification before a woman, or woman under 18, could undergo an abortion.

Anti-abortion voters tend to be more conscious of the broader strategy, while pro-abortion rights voters tend to see such initiatives as discrete measures.

Borgmann said language helps this dichotomy between galvanizing the base and not alienating moderates and liberals.

“The movement and the supporter know it’s part of this larger strategy,” Borgmann said, referring to discrete measures and specific language. Borgmann noted that pro-abortion rights voters tend to be less aware of, or sensitive to, the tactics and wording.

Palin has used some of the most common terminology like “a culture of life” in referring to abortion.

Her comments about special-needs children have a similar feel. Rather than talking broadly about people with special needs, her focus is on children and families. She frames it as a family issue.

In her first major policy speech, Palin focused on how she plans to prioritize funding for special-needs education. She said she would work for the full funding of a federal law that matches state funds for special education.

She couched her policy discussion in a broad discussion of the value of every child’s life.

“Too often, even in our own day, children with special needs have been set apart and excluded,” Palin said during an address in Arlington, Va. “Too often, they are made to feel that there is no place for them in the life of our country, that they don’t count or have nothing to contribute. This attitude is a grave disservice to these beautiful children, to their families and to our country — and I will work to change it.”

Borgmann noted that such phrasing is an example of reaching the base without turning off more moderate or even liberal voters.

It’s an important line for Palin to walk. Even if her crowds hold more extreme views than most voters, she must remember she is being broadcast live on national TV.

A recent ABC News poll shows that 53 percent of likely voters now say the economy is the most important issue, well above any social issue. Only about 6 percent of voters now say abortion, marriage and gun rights are their top issue for the 2008 presidential race, according to a Newsweek poll from last week.

Palin has been careful discussing her anti-abortion views during previous campaigns. In 2006, when running for governor of Alaska, she avoided talking about her anti-abortion views at major events.

The state of Alaska has strong legal protections for abortion rights, including an explicit right to privacy in the state constitution, and the electorate is not largely concerned about the issue.

Clover Simon, head of Planned Parenthood Alaska, said Palin only touches on reproductive rights explicitly at “really targeted events,” where supporters are staunchly anti-abortion.

In her year and a half as governor, before being tapped for the GOP presidential ticket, Palin had not pushed for any policy changes on abortion. Her anti-abortion supporters have said they are hopeful she might still make it a priority, if she returns to Alaska as governor.

In the meantime, to continue reaching out to her base, Palin only needs to hint at her record — and her plans — to let them know her views. Without getting into the specifics of her policies, her supporters know where she stands.

“As governor,” Palin said in a recent speech in Johnstown, Pa., “what I’ve been able to do is kind of manifest my commitment to life.”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Earlier this month, Republicans in Ohio lost their lawsuit challenging a state rule that allows voters to register and vote early on the same day. But the state party had no intention of conceding the point. GOP officials demanded records from all 88 county boards of election identifying every person who took advantage of same-day registration and voting. In one county, the Republican district attorney even opened a grand jury investigation.

“He’s investigating people who the law says are allowed to vote,” said Ohio ACLU lawyer Carrie Davis. After it was revealed that the district attorney was also the local chairman of the McCain campaign, he was forced to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case.

There’s no indication that any of these voters did anything illegal. But the attempt to investigate voters who took advantage of a state rule designed to encourage voter participation exemplifies the kinds of attacks on new voters that are going on across the country.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Even when the challenges fail, Republican officials persist in their claims of voter fraud in what appears to be an effort to lay the groundwork for challenging the outcome of Election Day. In about a dozen interviews, legal scholars and voting experts say this broad-based attack could lead to serious and continuing challenges to the legitimacy of the next president.

“[Republicans are] trying to do what they can to poison the well on the eve of the election because they’re not winning on the issues,” contends Charles Lichtman, statewide lead counsel for the Florida Democratic Party. The party, like the Obama campaign, is assembling a team of volunteer lawyers to take on unwarranted challenges and obstruction to voters on Election Day. “They know there are more Democrats registered than Republicans,” said Lichtman, “so they’re calling out fraud where it didn’t occur.”

For months now, Republicans have been claiming that voter fraud is rampant and that government officials aren’t sufficiently cracking down. Democrats insist that voter fraud is practically nonexistent –- the real problem is intimidation and harassment of voters at the polls, they say.

Voting-rights experts tend to agree with the Democrats. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, for example, found that, “It’s more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

Another study, by Barnard College political scientist Lori Minnite, similarly concluded that voter fraud is “extremely rare.” The Brennan Center also showed that the sort of strict rules advocated by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere would disenfranchise thousands of people -– usually the poor, elderly and minorities.

Even the most rigorous studies, however, haven’t made the issue any less of a political football. Republicans like Cleta Mitchell, an election lawyer who chairs the Republican National Lawyers Assn., says such experts are just part of “the professional vote-fraud deniers industry,” insisting that voting fraud exists even if it’s nearly impossible to prove.

“If you just deny it,” Mitchell said, “then that means that anyone who wants to take any steps to protect the integrity of the process can only be doing that because they’re a racist.”

In fact, even official Justice Dept. policy had acknowledged until recently that individual voter fraud has “only a minimal impact on the integrity of the voting process” and therefore usually wasn’t worth trying to prosecute. Then last year, the Bush administration changed that to allow individual prosecutors to pursue such cases at their discretion.

When some U.S. attorneys refused because of a lack of evidence, several were fired, contributing to the scandal that ultimately forced the resignation of Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. Since then, Democrats have become even more vigilant in fighting back against claims of voter fraud.

In many states — including Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Oregon — Republican officials have insisted that states square new voters’ registration information with that in other state databases, such as motor vehicle or Social Security. While such matching is required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, Republicans in swing states are insisting that the match be exact as a condition to vote.

Some of these “no-match, no-vote” states allow voters whose registration doesn’t match to fill out a provisional ballot, but they must provide matching verification information to election officials within 48 hours or their votes won’t count. In close swing states, which votes are counted could make all the difference to the outcome.

In Ohio, for example, Republicans sued Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to make matching a condition of voting. In response, she argued that adopting such a rule could get some 200,000 Ohio voters kicked off the rolls. The problem is not that they’re ineligible, for the most part. It’s that the information doesn’t match because voters have changed their names or because state workers have made clerical errors.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey (WDCpix)

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Brunner. Ruling on procedural grounds, it found that the state GOP likely didn’t have the right under federal law to challenge the Ohio law’s application. So Ohio Republicans are taking their fight elsewhere. Last week, they sent a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey asking him to force Ohio to require matching under federal law.

And on Friday, President George W. Bush himself got involved, asking Mukasey to investigate the status of the 200,000 non-matching Ohio voters.

The Republican attorney general in Wisconsin brought a similar challenge against his state’s elections board, but it failed last week. (The attorney general plans to appeal the decision.) A Dane County judge ruled that, “Nothing in state or federal law requires that there be a data match as a condition on the right to vote.” A matching requirement, the elections board had found, could have disenfranchised more than 20 percent of Wisconsin’s registered voters.

Republicans have lost most of their legal challenges claiming states aren’t adequately protecting against voter fraud. But legal experts worry that the steady barrage of legal attacks in battleground states is part of a broader effort to lay the groundwork for undermining the legitimacy of the outcome of the presidential election. That could further fuel the anger of the Republican base against the Democratic candidate — and possibly the next president.

“If it’s close, and if, in the grand scheme of things, Ohio would make a difference in the Electoral College or the finally tally, all these aspersions could come into play in challenging those results,” said Davis, the Ohio ACLU attorney. Either party could bring a legal challenge questioning the validity of provisional or absentee ballots.

While experts say it’s rare to see the sort of scenario that occurred in Florida in 2000, where the outcome of the presidential election hinged on a few hundred votes in one state, the increased focus on voter problems and recent changes in voting laws means litigation over the outcome remains a real possibility.

“Besides Florida, you’d have to go back to the 19th century in the United States to get to an election that was that close,” said Daniel Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University and an expert in election law. “Then again, in 2004 we weren’t that far away — there were about 100,000 votes in Ohio on which the outcome depended. If we’d had a second litigated election in 2004, it would have been like lightning striking twice. So it could happen again.”

Because of the close elections and revelations of voting problems in 2000 and 2004, said Tokaji, “we’ve got people paying much closer attention to the mechanics of elections.” Also, “there are a lot of changes in the law. That always leads to more litigation, because there are issues of how those laws should be interpreted and applied.”

Even if the election weren’t close enough to merit legal challenges, many Democrats worry that the GOP claims of voter fraud are a preemptive attempt to undermine the legitimacy of a Barack Obama presidency.

“It’s a desperate attempt to unfairly flavor and throw something out there and take people away from the real issues,” said Lichtman of the Florida Democratic Party. Florida’s voter registration rules, which require all voter registration information to match the state databases, have been the subject of ongoing litigation.

The History of Voter Fraud

Claims of voter fraud before an election are nothing new, of course. For centuries, strict-voter registration rules have been applied to limit access to voting, often targeting the poor and minority citizens.

“We’ve seen it throughout American history,” said Tokaji. “In the 19th century, claims of fraud were made to exclude immigrants, ethnic minorities and laborers. And throughout most of the 20th century, the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the South was done through voter-registration requirements that local officials claimed were to prevent voter fraud.”

More recently, Republicans have been claiming widespread voter fraud to tighten requirements on who can vote. “They’re trying to use the so-called epidemic of voter fraud to justify voter ID laws,” said Gerald Hebert, a senior elections official at the Justice Dept. from 1973-1994 and who is executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization focusing on election reform.

That’s how Indiana came to pass its voter-identification law. When that law was challenged, the Supreme Court acknowledged there was no evidence of voter fraud in Indiana. Still, the court upheld, by a vote of 6 to 3, the state’s requirement that voters present a state-issued photo identification card before casting a ballot, finding that it did not impose an unjustified burden on the poor, minorities or others less likely to have such a photo ID

Associate law professor Michael Pitts at Indiana University studied the effects of the new law. He found the votes of 80 percent of Indiana residents forced to fill out a provisional ballot because they didn’t have the required I.D. card were never counted.

The ACORN Controversy

Recent revelations that some workers from the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, have turned in fraudulent registration forms has fanned the flames of this dispute, leading to calls for more voter-identification laws, as well as no-match, no-vote requirements.

But Republicans’ claims against ACORN have gone further. Legislators and party officials have used the false registrations to claim that ACORN is engaging in an effort to steal the election for the Democratic Party. Investigations of fraudulent activity are going on in at least 10 states, and the Justice Dept. has reportedly begun an investigation of ACORN, a community-organizing group that advocates on behalf of low-income families, following requests from numerous Republicans.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), for example, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to Mukasey earlier this month, urging him to investigate ACORN as a “criminal enterprise.”

The Obama campaign and former Dept. of Justice lawyers involved in voting-rights issues say such an investigation before the election might intimidate legitimate voters and violate Justice Dept. policy.

ACORN has repeatedly explained that when its workers submitted false registrations, the fraud was against ACORN, not against voters or the elections process. That’s because the duplicate or made-up registration forms were mostly turned in by workers who ACORN paid to sign up voters in their neighborhoods.

That some of those workers copied names out of the phone book, or listed their favorite cartoon characters, doesn’t mean those people are going to show up to vote. But it does mean that ACORN didn’t get it’s money’s worth. The group checks all submitted registration forms and flags for local election officials those that are suspect. In most states, it’s still required by law to turn all forms in.

“The overwhelming evidence is that fraudulent voter registrations do not lead to fraudulent voting,” said Wendy Weiser, a deputy director specializing in voting rights at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s a big resource drain on election officials, but it doesn’t affect the outcome.”

That hasn’t stopped the allegations. Sen. John McCain’s claim in the last debate that ACORN is potentially committing “one of the greatest frauds of voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy” has helped set the stage for broad claims of a stolen election after Nov. 4.

McCain’s remarks were followed by violence. Within days, two ACORN offices were vandalized, and one organizer received a death threat. People for the American Way reports that ACORN offices have received a barrage of racist and threatening voicemails and emails.

ACORN’s own exaggerations about its effectiveness in registering voters haven’t helped. Last Thursday, the group admitted it had vastly overstated the number of legitimate new voters it registered this year, acknowledging that about 30 percent of the 1.3 million new voters it had claimed credit for were either duplicates or not real.

Though some percentage of erroneous applications is expected, both the large number of registered voters and the colorful news stories — about how characters like Mickey Mouse have registered, for example — encouraged Republicans to keep hammering away at charges that the liberal-leaning group, which advocates on behalf of low-income Americans expected to favor Sen. Barack Obama, is planning to steal the presidential election for Democrats.

Given the latest polls, it probably wouldn’t need to. But election lawyers worry that the problems of voter registration by groups like ACORN provide an easy way for Republicans to later claim, if Obama wins, that he’s not the legitimate president.

“It does seem like there is an attempt to cast the specter of voter fraud over this election,” said Hebert. “Like there’s an attempt to get people all riled up in the base of the Republican Party, to say, ‘We’re not going to let people steal our election.’”

The phone calls play one of several automated messages about Sen. Barack Obama and are being made in swing states across the country, including Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia.

The messages include a slew of dishonest accusations, among them:

Obama “put Hollywood above America“; is not commited to winning the war on Terror; palled around with former Weatherman Bill Ayers; and voted to deny medical care to newborn babies who survive abortions.

Now that Sen. John McCain has decided to embrace this negative tactic, it’s worthwhile to recall some of the things he said during the 2000 GOP primaries — when he was the target of a vicious robocall effort run by Karl Rove on behalf of then-Gov. George W. Bush.

During a GOP primary debate in South Carolina in February 2000, McCain addressed robocalls. From the transcript:

MCCAIN: … so here’s what happened. We ran an ad that was a response ad. At a town hall meeting, a mother stood up and she said, “Sen. McCain, my son was 13 last year. We had a lot of trouble explaining things to him that went on in Washington.” She said, “Now he’s 14. He’s told me not long ago, ‘John McCain is my hero.’ He’s the man I want to be like.

“Well, last night he came into her room,” she said, “and he had tears in his eyes because he had answered the phone and even though he told the caller that he was 14, [the caller] said, ‘Do you know that John McCain is a liar, and a thief and cheat?’”

Well, that night I called my people together. I said, take down our response ad.

We’re running nothing but a positive campaign from now on. I committed to that, I promise that.

In a March 5, 2000, appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” McCain said he would never want to say, “I ran that kind of campaign.”

“I can’t say that, with the things that have happened. I’ll support the nominee of the party. I will support him, but I cannot say that things like that, with the Wyly brothers and the phone calls and the attack ads such as the one you just–it’s not… it’s not a campaign that I would run, and nor would I ever want to look back and say, ‘I ran that kind of campaign.’”

Congratulations, Sen. McCain. You’re running that kind of campaign.

Quinnipiac University released its first round of post-debate polling results today for the three largest swing states. The pollsters found that Sen. Barack Obama has surged above 50 percent in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida — taking what is approaching a comfortable lead in all three states.

According to the data, Obama now holds an eight-percentage point lead in Florida and Ohio, and a whopping 15-point lead in Pennsylvania.

Gov. Sarah Palin’s sagging favorability and more voter confidence in Sen. Barack Obama’s ability to handle the economy are propelling the Democrat to wider likely voter leads over Republican John McCain in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to simultaneous Quinnipiac University Swing State polls released today.

No one has been elected president since 1960 without taking two of these three largest swing states in the Electoral College. Results from the independent Quinnipiac University polls conducted before and after the debate show:

* Florida: Obama up 49 – 43 percent pre-debate [+/- 2.9 percent] and 51 – 43 percent post-debate [+/- 3.4 percent];

* Ohio: Obama up 49 – 42 percent pre-debate [+/- 2.8 percent] and 50 – 42 percent post-debate [+/- 3.4 percent];

*Pennsylvania: Obama ahead 49 – 43 percent pre-debate [+/- 2.9 percent] and 54 – 39 percent post-debate [+/- 3.4 percent].

Pre-debate surveys ended at 8 p.m. Friday with post-debate surveys Saturday-Monday.

More than 84 percent of voters in each state say the debate did not change their mind. But by margins of 13 to 17 percent, voters in each state say Obama did a better job in the debate. And by margins of 15 to 27 percent, independent voters in each state say Obama won.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal/MySpace poll of likely new voters and those who did not vote in 2004 also indicates coming hurdles for the McCain campaign.

According to the poll, Obama leads by a two-to-one margin among these voters, 61 percent to 30 percent. From First Read:

If you take the Bush (62 million) and Kerry (59 million) vote totals from 2004, assume turnout increases by 20 million additional voters (about what it did in 2004), and assume Obama wins these additional voters 2-to-1, then Obama would best McCain nationally by more than three million voters, 72.4 million to 68.7 million. But if turnout increases by just 10 million, then the numbers become Obama 65.7 million, McCain 65.3 million — a virtual tie. “An Obama victory could very well depend on getting these folks to the polls,” says NBC/WSJ co-pollster Neil Newhouse (R).

What’s more, we’ve done the math that a 20 percent turnout increase in swing states like Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia can flip these red states from red to blue. What has to worry the Republicans is that this is a whole generation of new voters who are leaning Democratic. What does that mean for the GOP’s future? It was a whole new generation of young voters who grew up with Reagan who helped bring in a Republican Congress and two terms for George W. Bush. This generation of new voters grew up Clinton, could they be what puts the Democrats on a 20-year power trajectory?

Finally, as a footnote that may contribute to this snapshot of the current mood of the country, a new poll of Arizona voters found the race is tightening in McCain’s home state as well.

The survey, conducted by Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism, showed McCain’s 10-point lead last month contracted to seven percentage points. It is also worth noting that the poll also found that 50 percent of Arizonans believe Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin helps McCain’s chances.

According to poll director Dr. Bruce Merrill, “McCain still leads in Arizona but the race has tightened during the past month. At one time, it looked like Arizona was solidly Republican, but now has become a state in which the Democrats may choose to actively campaign. Most importantly, the undecided vote is now down to 15 percent. The electorate is highly polarized and there probably won’t be much movement by Republicans and Democrats. McCain maintains his lead in Arizona mainly because of the support of evangelicals and conservative Democrats. As always, who turns out to vote will determine who wins Arizona. The election in Arizona may be decided by whether young people and Hispanics turn out to vote and who the independent voters, who are a growing and important segment of the electorate, decide to support.”

However, while Obama opened a campaign office in Phoenix earlier this month, he has not appeared in the state since effectively securing the Democratic presidential nomination in early June. I live in Arizona, and I have yet to see a single ad from either campaign on the air here — aside from those airing nationally on cable news networks.

This could indicate that neither candidate appears to be taking seriously the possibility that Arizona might go blue in November.

This entire lead is within the margin of error, so by the poll’s own (flimsy) standard, the candidates are statistically tied.

Don’t expect that basic fact to ruin a breathless headline, though. Even when they do reflect statistically significant gaps, national polls are often misleading, because they trump up shifts in the electorate that have little impact on the election. A huge spike in Obama’s support in California, for example, does nothing for him in November.

There is, however, one potentially significant trend in this new poll. After all the delegation breakfasts and convention speeches ended, it appears that McCain shored up his party base more than Obama. That’s not surprising. McCain defined his convention by letting the base override his own preferences for a running mate. Ditching Gov. Ridge for Gov. Palin unleashed a multi-day abortion-bashing, media-sniping puritan political orgy. Let There Be Palin, he said, and The Base said it was good.

Since then, McCain’s support among Republicans jumped 8 points, according to the CBS/NYT poll. In the same period, Obama only gained four points among Democrats.

So while both nominees held exactly 79 percent support among their respective parties before the conventions, McCain has now consolidated his base a bit more.

All the national poll caveats still apply, but this has more electoral impact because battleground states with a Republican edge are more likely to firm up for McCain. See Florida, for example, which is now slipping away even though Obama is spending more there, and despite his campaign’s attempt to woo older voters there with trips by both Clintons.

The larger race is still clearly trending Obama’s way. The economy hurts McCain in Ohio, while mortgages hurt him in the Southwest swing states that he must hold for victory, especially Nevada, which led the country in foreclosures this fall. So while the “fundamentals” of his base constituency are strong, the rest of the electorate is still eyeing change.

Update: Commenter “Total” writes: “That’s not what margin of error means. First off, Obama’s up 5 and the margin of error is 3, so it’s not within the margin of error.” Wrong. The margin of error is plus or minus 3, for a spread of six. Thus The Times reports that Obama’s apparent lead is “a difference within the poll’s margin of sampling error.” Total also recommends an analysis by Kevin Drum that stresses how these figures essentially turn on probability, so the “bigger the lead, the more likely that someone is ahead” — even if they are technically within the margin of error. We agree on that one.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) (Zuma Press)

WASILLA, Alaska – Pastor Larry Kroon of the Wasilla Bible Church, where Gov. Sarah Palin attends services, calls on his congregation to make up their own minds about politics.

“I’m not the one you look to for policy—foreign, domestic or local,” Kroon said Sunday morning to a sea of 500 attendees. “I’m not the one you look to for analysis.”

Instead, Kroon challenges church members to hold him to task on his core religious mission, to help them discover the “wonder, glory and mystery of Jesus.” Though Kroon has said he does not push an ideological perspective, when the church faithful study the Bible, they tend to see the world through a conservative lens.

Palin has also been a member of the Assembly of God Church, where she gave a talk in June to high-school students urging them to pray that an Alaska gas pipeline and the war in Iraq fulfill “God’s will.”

In tapping Palin, who is ardently pro-life, Sen. John McCain’s Republican presidential campaign is hoping to galvanize the evangelical base of the party. Since Palin joined the ticket, all indications show that the Alaska maverick has lit a fire under the sleeping giant of the GOP Christian conservative base that had so far shown lackluster support for McCain. Evangelicals, who have often been overlooked in this campaign cycle, are suddenly becoming a critical demographic — thanks to Palin.

Bridging the “enthusiasm divide,” Palin has not entirely spelled doom for Sen. Barack Obama, who has some religious support of his own among progressive evangelicals.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

But the Palin pick did boost McCain’s efforts to court the religious right, regarded as among his biggest weaknesses. Back in 2006, McCain was accused of flip-flopping in supporting the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, having previously called him an “agent of intolerance.”

In contrast, conservative religious powerbrokers, like James Dobson, who had expressed scepticism about McCain, quickly took to Palin, a lifelong pro-lifer and card-carrying member of the National Rifle Assn. In the 24 hours hours after McCain announced his selection, his campaign raked in a record $7 million in Internet donations.

“She’s a devastatingly good choice,” said Jacques Berlinerblau, the author of “Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics” and director of the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University. “From a religious perspective, Biden gave [Obama] nothing.”

Berlinerblau, who has not endorsed a presidential candidate, pointed out that the evangelical voting bloc does more for McCain than just energize voters in an abstract sense. These active churchgoers have a framework in place to bring out the vote, particularly in large churches. Churches like Palin’s, which enjoy non-profit tax status, are not allowed to endorse candidates, though pastors can freely discuss hot-topics like abortion.

“Infrastructure is almost synonymous with ‘church,’” Berlinerblau said. “Everybody knows what’s going on, [the pastor] just has to roll out the issues and everybody knows what he’s talking about.”

Though Berlinerblau predicts a backlash against such use of religious institutions in future elections, the pulpit could end up being a powerful political tool in 2008.

Obama does have an advantage against such mobilizing, compared to Democratic contenders of the past. The Illinois senator carries extra religious clout. During the Democratic and Republican primary seasons, a Time magazine poll found that among likely voters, 24 percent considered Obama “a person of strong religious faith” out of a list of prominent politicians, while about 15 percent of respondents said the same about McCain.

At the time of the poll, in May 2007, Time magazine pointed to a history of black Democratic politicians being associated with mobilizing their communities through Christian churches. Obama was perceived in this same context.

Considering that Sen. John Kerry appealed to the progressive wing of evangelicals and managed to siphon off about 20 to 22 percent of the evangelical vote in 2004, some experts say Obama has a good shot of holding some ground with the voting bloc.

Martin E. Marty, a prominent religion and culture scholar, said it’s important to remember that evangelicals are not a homogenous group.

“In the last eight years – the Bush years – there has been a great growth in the internal diversity of the group called evangelicals,” Marty said. “I don’t think many of them would depart from the criticism of abortion, but I don’t think they all give it the same priority.”

Marty noted that many evangelicals ascribe to a the social justice ethic outlined by Cardinal Joseph Berardin in 1983, the “consistent ethic of life” or seamless web. This philosophy opposes abortion but also euthanasia, war and the death penalty.

Factoring in these progressive evangelicals, Berlinerblau estimates Obama could be carrying as much as 24 to 25 percent of the voting bloc.

Now in a neck-and-neck race with McCain, Obama needs to hold onto them, particularly in swing states like Ohio.

“If Kerry had won 6 percent more evangelicals in Ohio [in 2004],” Berlinerblau said he calculated in researching his book, “he would have won the election.”

Midwestern evangelicals are perhaps a better target for the Obama campaign than elsewhere in the country, like the Deep South. Marty pointed out that in places like the upper-Midwest, residents are exposed to more of a mix of religious viewpoints that tend to foster less extreme views, making them more likely to support a more liberal candidate.

Just weeks ago, Obama’s Midwestern strategy was aimed largely at another voting bloc — independents. This group was expected to define the 2008 election, particularly with a maverick match-up between Obama and McCain. But. McCain’s choice of Palin has so shaken up the scene that evangelicals may once again emerge as the deciding vote.

In 2004, many observers had expected a less-energized evangelical vote. President George W. Bush, however, won more than 10 percent more of the evangelical vote in 2004 than he did in 2000, according the non-partisan Pew Research Center.

The question now is how much of the vote Obama will siphon off from McCain. It’s difficult to know exactly how the internal divisions of evangelicals break.

At services on Sunday, Kroon noted the difficulty of trying to understand who someone is — whether its Jesus or your hometown mayor.

“Look at us struggle,” Kroon said.