Bush, Kerry Go Grass-Roots for Votes

Aug. 4, 2004 -- Despite all the technology introduced during the 2004 presidential campaign, the race has become a feverishly grass-roots hunt for votes.

On Tuesday, the liberal activists of MoveOn.org and America Coming Together announced a 28-city concert tour to raise money and awareness to help Sen. John Kerry defeate President Bush in November.

The concerts — featuring Bruce Springsteen, the Dave Matthews Band and the Dixie Chicks, among others — will be in cities strategically targeted almost entirely in key battleground states, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

"The tour has a very basic intent," Springsteen said in an interview with Ted Koppel for tonight's Nightline. "Its intent is to change the direction of the government, change administrations in November, to mobilize progressive voters, and get them to the polls come election time. So it's a very practical, practical purpose."

Bush has made appearances aimed at mobilizing potential Republican voters. In addition to more traditional constituencies like the Catholic organization the Knights of Columbus, which the president visited last night, Bush has appeared in front of NASCAR fans.

In addition to the veterans Kerry has been pursuing, he has also tried to appeal to hunters. Bush visited the Amish; Kerry, coal miners. Bush gave an interview to Field and Stream magazine and appeared on the Outdoor Life Network cable channel; Kerry talked to American Windsurfer and rapped with MTV.

According to Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, this is because what was once considered a uniform American audience has become balkanized.

"There was a time when we had three networks, when you could virtually talk to everybody at the same time, where everyone was feeding from the same cultural trough," Thompson said. "Now there really is a sense that if you want to talk to the entire electorate, you've got to collect this coalition of audiences — a little bit here, a little bit there."

Candidates Target Distinct Markets

Distinct markets are targeted by candidates, campaigns, political parties and interest groups, whether fans of pro wrestling or college sports or, for Democrats, the audiences for Michael Moore's anti-Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9-11.

"When you're looking at maybe, you know 7 or 8 percent of the electorate as being persuadable, as being undecided, certainly at the margins, it may very well matter," said Robert George, a columnist and editorial writer for the New York Post.

"When we look at how close that 2000 election was, one appearance in Surfer Quarterly is almost enough perhaps to make this go one direction or the other," Thompson said. "I think nobody wants to be in a position, the night after the election, to think that that one extra stop, that one extra talk at a NASCAR event, that one extra whatever could have been the thing that turned the corner."

So does this really mean experts think a concert by the boss — or an appearance by a NASCAR driver — might actually influence the election? In an election this close, yes, it does.

ABC News' Ted Koppel, Michel Martin, and Peter Demchuk also contributed to this report.