Typically Republican Nebraska can split up its electoral votes

OMAHA -- Ralph Morocco, a "retired Republican" volunteer for Barack Obama, parks his Prius and heads up the walk to a house in an affluent neighborhood on this city's west side.

"Any chance you'd be an Obama supporter?" he asks a woman at her door. She shakes her head. A second woman is on the fence. After 30 minutes, he and another canvasser log two undecideds, one no and three yeses.

"We're the campaign working hardest," says Morocco, 58, a health care consultant. "I don't know if hard work always pays off."

In most presidential election years, Democrats need hardly work at all here. Nebraska hasn't voted Democratic since Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964.

But a law that allows the state's five Electoral College votes to be split up has encouraged Democrats to try for one of them. Republicans predict the election will hinge on battleground states like Virginia, but Obama's campaign isn't taking any chances.

"The campaigns of old used to be a basic mathematic formula … to get to 270," says John Berge, Obama's state director. "Today's campaign is more of an algebraic equation where you've got various different variables."

Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that don't have winner-take-all rules for electoral votes. In those states, the candidate who wins a majority statewide gets two votes. The other votes are awarded to the winner in each congressional district.

Neither state has ever split votes, but Democrats say Nebraska's 2nd District, which includes most of Omaha and part of Sarpy County, may be within reach.

Obama energized Democrats with an easy win against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in presidential caucuses here in February.

Democrats are still outnumbered by Republicans but have narrowed the gap in voter registration from 12,497 to 4,105 in Douglas County, which makes up most of the 2nd District.

"When they started looking at where … to play," Berge says of the Obama campaign, "this was one of those places."

The Illinois senator has 15 paid staffers in Omaha. Bill Clinton had two in 1992, the first election under proportional voting.

"Nebraska pretty much never mattered," says Democratic activist Judy Monaghan. "We've never had this kind of activity."

Obama has opened three campaign offices. Hundreds of volunteers work the phones and knock on doors, especially in north Omaha, where most of Nebraska's African Americans live and organizers have registered more than 4,000 new voters.

Cheryl Tucker, a single mother and former cook at the popular Dunn Deal Café, is one of them.

"I really wasn't into politics," says Tucker, 38. But after listening to customers talk, "There's a black man for the community and I want to give him a shot."

Randall Atkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, says Obama has generated more enthusiasm among Democrats than Al Gore and John Kerry combined. "The fact you put feet on the ground in Omaha is a big deal," he says.

McCain's campaign website directs Nebraska supporters to an office in suburban Denver.

"The state party is doing what they can to assist," says Nebraska GOP field director Jeff Kanger.

Republican City Councilman Jim Vokal says his party is mobilizing voters in Sarpy County. Home to Offutt Air Force Base, it is filled with retired military who like McCain and social conservatives excited about his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

"This has united the party," Vokal says. "We're now excited about the ticket."

Retiring Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is not. He has disagreed with McCain over the Iraq war and criticized Palin as a lightweight on foreign policy. He won't back any candidate, but his wife Lilibet endorsed Obama.

Hagel's ambivalence "offers an opening" for Obama to appeal to independents, says Curtis Gans of Washington's Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

Independent Lucas Munderloh, 26, a University of Nebraska student, will "probably" vote for Obama but knows many who won't. "People here in Nebraska are traditional," he says. "They're not the type for something new."

But another student, Republican Benta Kleven, 26, says she is backing Obama. "He's going to change things," she says.

When Republican Nicole Weers was in her 20s and a self-described "one-issue voter" against abortion, she would never have considered Obama. But at 32, the suburban Bellevue mother cares about poverty, too, and is undecided. She is torn about her vote. "As a believer, I don't think God is necessarily a Republican or Democrat," Weers says. "I want to pick who I think will do the best job."