Final factor: who will turn out voters

As President Bush and Sen. John Kerry hurtle into the final two days of the presidential race, the campaign has in some ways already moved out of their hands - and into the hands of people like Regina Weinhardt.

Ms. Weinhardt, a stay-at-home mother of three in Thornbury Township, Pa., spent much of the weekend at the Hilltop Pub, a temporary headquarters for the Republican Party's get-out-the-vote drive in Delaware County, dialing up likely Bush voters and reading from a script reminding them to vote. A first-time volunteer, she admits that cold-calling strangers isn't easy - and at first she was relieved to get answering machines. But with deep concerns about terrorism and "morality" issues like abortion, she feels she has no choice but to be involved: "I've never felt this strongly before."

With polls showing the race still neck and neck - and with very few undecided voters left - strategists on both sides now agree that whoever does a better job at getting supporters to vote will probably win. The campaigns, along with a number of outside groups, are boasting the largest turnout operations in history, with hundreds of thousands of volunteers working the phones and going door to door in key battleground states. The overall effect is already clear in the vast increase in newly registered voters and, more recently, in high participation in early voting in states that allow it.

But while all this activity is aimed at electing a candidate, it may also have a broader cultural effect, simply by involving millions - volunteers and the voters they contact - in a massive exercise in civic participation of a kind not seen in decades. Turnout experts predict that the number of Americans casting ballots this year could be as high as 120 million - and, if the levels of intensity extend beyond November, could mark a reversal in the nation's steady decline in voting.

"This election is proving to be a great galvanizer of public interest," says Daniel Menaker, executive editor in chief of Random House in New York, who just spent a vacation week in Columbus, Ohio, volunteering for America Coming Together (ACT), a liberal get-out-the-vote organization. "This is the most energizing and encouraging political thing I've done in a long time."

The last time Mr. Menaker was this politically active was during the 1960s and '70s, and he says that what's going on now feels vastly different. Despite the country's much-touted political polarization, "you don't feel like anyone's trying to upset the apple cart of the nation," he says. "It's a very serious and earnest effort."

While the ground game is coming into sharper focus in these final days, it has been a critical feature of both campaigns for well over a year. Driven by memories of 2000, each side made it a top priority early on to identify and lock in every potential supporter. The operations have combined sophisticated targeting techniques - such as compiling massive databases on likely voters, indicating their top issues and other important bits of information - with a renewed emphasis on old-fashioned, person-to-person contact.

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