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Post-Partisans - The truest Independents, they have little interest in either major party and want solutions, not bickering, out of Washington.
Troop Supporters - These voters, many in military families, may disagree with current Iraq policies, but they also believe the United States shouldn't shrink from fighting a global war against Islamic extremism.
Millennial Evangelicals - This new generation of Christian activists has expanded the concept of moral values to include society's duty to the poor.
Latino Independents - They supported McCain in Arizona and chose Hillary Clinton over Obama.
First-Generation Asians - The GOP's veneration of small-business owners and its support for lower taxes appeal to this group, but so do the Democrats' immigration policies.
GOP Mavericks - These Republicans are disillusioned with Bush in particular and their party's rightward drift on social issues in general.
True swing voters often fall under more than one category. Jason Pudlo, a 27-year-old Pentecostal Christian and married father of three in Springfield, Missouri, is a young evangelical as well as a maverick. He supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 but is seriously considering the Democrat this time.
"Initially, I thought that if you're a Christian, you vote Republican," he says. Pudlo remains adamantly opposed to abortion but says that in light of the needs of the poor, the slumping economy, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, being a single-issue voter no longer makes sense. Now he's thinking about voting for Obama.
In presidential elections, no state has been a better predictor than Pudlo's: Missouri's 11 electoral votes have gone to the winning candidate in 25 of the last 26 elections. Obama's narrow 2008 primary victory over Clinton in Missouri has given his campaign hopes of carrying it in the fall, and he's done several events in small towns throughout the state. If he makes it there, the thinking goes, he'll make it anywhere.
New Mexico, another key state, has been at odds with the national vote exactly once (in 1976). Some 38 percent of the state's electorate is Hispanic, including Independent voter Ricardo Luna, a 24-year-old husband, father, and graduate student.
Luna says three issues will determine his vote: health care, the Iraq war, and immigration. He and his wife, also a student, have no health insurance; their son is on Medicaid. His mother-in-law does have coverage, but when her husband died, she had to reapply and now pays premiums three times as high. "This is a system that doesn't make sense," Luna says. "I want reform in health care, so that makes me want Obama, but …" The but concerns foreign policy, an area in which he finds McCain the more knowledgeable candidate.
If Hispanics, now the largest minority group in the United States, are essential in 2008, so are Asian Americans, who are closing in on African Americans for second place.
Asian voters, like Latinos, are increasingly dispersed throughout the country, many in key states. Napapond Fay, a 30-year-old Thai American from Detroit, voted Democratic in the past two elections. She's considering McCain because she thinks he speaks honestly about the economy, her top concern. That's perhaps a surprise, given that "McCain is the inheritor of the Bush economic legacy, and it isn't pretty," says University of Virginia political scientist Larry J. Sabato.
Indeed, McCain has tried to change the subject from the economy to security, mocking Obama as a celebrity rather than a seasoned leader-even going so far as to invoke Paris Hilton in a campaign ad. The pundits enjoyed the spectacle, but in 2008 supervoters have weightier concerns in mind.
Lisa Medvetz is a 39-year-old surgeon from Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. The mother of two young girls, she had been a Republican who twice supported George W. Bush-votes she now regrets. She registered as a Democrat this year, intending to vote for Obama. By the time the Pennsylvania primary rolled around, however, Medvetz, who describes herself as "very patriotic," was upset by the revelation that the Obamas' pastor once gave a sermon in which he said, "Goddamn America." (Obama has since renounced the pastor.) In the end, Medvetz surprised even herself by voting for Hillary Clinton.
This highlights a key attribute of swing voters: They really do pay attention to how the campaign unfolds. For her part, Medvetz began reevaluating Obama as soon as the primaries ended. She views him as smart and principled, appreciates his reluctance to take donations from special interests, and praises him for not allowing others "to define him by his race."
His inexperience doesn't bother her, although she venerates McCain's service in the Navy and government: "He has sacrificed a great deal for this country, so right away he has my ultimate respect."
Medvetz, a supervoter in a swing state, is truly undecided-conflicted, even. A few weeks before the election, she speaks for many when she concludes, "I just have to pray this country picks the right person."
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