Eric Rademacher, who directs the University of Cincinnati's Institute for Policy Research, said polls indicate that as many as one in seven Ohio voters could change their minds. That group is evenly divided between the candidates and concentrated among those between the ages of 18 and 45, a group that generally favors Obama by a wide margin.
"The key question is whether or not the younger voters turn out," he said. "Right now, we're not seeing that." Obama led McCain in Ohio by 49 percent to 46 percent in Rademacher's most recent statewide survey, released over the weekend.
For some voters who haven't made a final decision, like those who gathered Sunday afternoon to discuss the campaign, Ohio's economic changes seem to have deepened a downbeat mood.
In a windowless room on the outskirts of Cleveland, they used phrases such as "down the tubes" to describe the direction of the country. One man who expressed a more upbeat view acknowledged that he was just trying to be optimistic about the nation's "probably unprecedented" economic plight.
All of those in the discussion group, sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, live in Lake County, a largely white, working-class area that has been a bellwether in the past three presidential elections.
Hillary Clinton carried Lake County on her way to defeating Obama in the Ohio primary. Among her supporters was Cookie Lo Schiavo, 62, legal secretary for many years now employed as a nanny.
Lo Schiavo exemplifies those who tell pollsters that they are undecided but who seem unlikely to vote for Obama, Hart said in a post-session analysis.
Lo Schiavo said that she has voted Democratic for 40 years, and would seem to fit the profile of an Obama voter. Her college-educated husband has lost his job and is now working for $8.50 an hour, and she is enthusiastic about Joe Biden, whom she wishes were at the top of the ticket.
But when members of the group are asked which of the four candidates for president or vice president they would not want to sit next to on a plane, she is the only one to mention Obama.
"I don't trust him," she said, calling Obama "theatrical" and "too perfect" and explaining her reservations as a "gut feeling."
Gretchen Eckford, 41, a single mother wearing a Cleveland Indians pullover, voted for Bush in the last two elections and considers herself an independent. The weekly churchgoer and manager of a retail store might be considered a likely McCain vote, but she said the senator's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate "turned me off."
