WEST ALLIS — Kathleen Heinz is the kind of undecided voter Barack Obama supporters say he needs to win Wisconsin.

The white, 57-year-old woman works on an assembly line and lives in a modest, 704-square-foot bungalow with her husband just outside of Milwaukee.

So when the independent political group Advancing Wisconsin set out last week to persuade voters to support the Illinois Democrat, they zeroed in on people like Heinz while bypassing most of her neighbors — including some with Obama signs in their front yards — in West Allis' politically divided McGeoch Meadows neighborhood.

"It's really about how do you work the angles, identifying target audiences and moving target audiences," Mike Tate, executive director of Advancing Wisconsin, said of persuading voters. "I know what 'identifying target audiences' sounds like, but this is about winning, and in a state like Wisconsin you win at the margins."

For Obama and his supporters, the margins include white, working-class voters living just outside urban areas and in small towns; undecided women; and independents and casual voters.

As the presidential campaign enters the homestretch, the presidential campaigns of Sen. Obama and his GOP rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and groups that support them are accelerating their efforts to get the right people to the polls.

To do that, they've developed detailed dossiers on you, with information like how often you vote, whether you own a gun, the kind of car you drive, the size of your house, the magazines you read — even whether you have a dog license or are a NASCAR fan.

The canvassing effort on both sides will wind down this week, when organizers turn to making sure they get voters to the polls.

Republicans have been using voter profiles for years, and the party's ability to identify and turn out voters was widely credited with helping President Bush win a second term in 2004. Now the party is hoping to replicate that success in Wisconsin this year.

Through a combined effort of the state GOP, the Republican National Committee, and the McCain campaign, state Republicans are shoring up support among committed GOP voters but putting special emphasis on identified Republicans who may not regularly vote.

In liberal stronghold Madison, they have had in their sights voters they identified as independent and "soft" Democrats they believe they can persuade to vote for McCain, said Mark Jefferson, executive director of the state GOP.

"It's a little bit of a science," Jefferson said. "We've always focused on the middle and independents, but we also try to identify those low-propensity Republicans who, if we can get them to the polls, we can be successful."

Getting to their houses is another matter. On a recent night in Madison's Midvale Heights neighborhood, GOP canvasser Brian McCulliss said he was glad he brought his scooter.

"These houses are very spread out," he said, looking at his target list. "If I didn't have a scooter I don't know how I'd do it."

The campaigns also are asking supporters to persuade people with similar interests.

Obama spokesman Matt Lehrich said the campaign in recent weeks has emphasized "peer-to-peer" organizing: Veterans who support Obama talk to other veterans, women talk to women, and hunters talk to hunters — including in areas not known as Democratic strongholds like West Bend and Fond du Lac as well as rural areas across the state, he said.

Sarah Lenti, a spokeswoman for McCain's campaign, said it has hundreds of volunteers across the state doing the same thing, with a focus on women, veterans, small business owners, farmers, Catholics and Democrats.

Tate, a veteran of several statewide campaigns, agreed to describe how Advancing Wisconsin identifies voters, a method he said was typical in a state where voters don't register according to their party affiliation.

Organizers start with the state's voter registration list, which includes a person's name, address, voting history and birth date. Then they enhance that list by adding other public information such as who holds fishing or hunting licenses, who's certified to teach or who works as a nurse. Finally, they'll add commercial data like magazine subscriptions.

With that information "you start to overlay hundreds, if not thousands, of data points" to build voter profiles, from which a person's political tendencies can be drawn.
Advancing Wisconsin then conducts polls to identify which demographic groups are more or less likely to support a candidate or an issue, Tate said. The polling data is compared to the voter data to determine targets for direct mail, phone calls and canvassing visits, Tate said.

As an independent political organization, Advancing Wisconsin can advocate on certain issues, urge people to vote, and spend money on behalf of specific candidates, he said, but it can't coordinate with candidates or parties.

In West Allis last week, canvassers Charles Perkins, 51, a real estate agent, and Gregory Collar, 51, a laid-off auto parts worker, were canvassing the ward that gave 52 percent of its 2004 presidential vote to Democratic Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

But Obama won barely four in ten votes there in the state's February primary, while New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton received most of the rest.

"This is the kind of neighborhood where, if Obama is going to win Wisconsin, he's going to need to do well in," Tate said.

Heinz said Obama would get her vote, saying in an interview she was swayed by her confidence in his vice presidential pick, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

Another targeted voter on the canvassers' list, Orlando Santiago, 29, who owns a drywall construction company, said he's undecided but leaning toward Obama. Santiago called himself an independent and said he voted for Bush in 2004.

But despite all the research and high-tech tools at their disposal, organizers know to expect to be disappointed. Several times, the canvassers were turned away after introducing themselves.

Metal products inspector Walter Pezall, 52, who said he's received literature and phone calls from both sides, said he decided to vote for McCain. Perkins asked him to reconsider. Pezall said he would.