Chuck Lasker, a political blogger and Internet consultant in Indiana, hosted a gathering last week of 20 people he calls “whispering Republicans” — party members like him who support Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat, for president. Over iced tea and brownies, the renegades took turns explaining why they liked Mr. Obama and recalling the strange stares from other Republicans.
“It was sort of like a group therapy session,” said Mr. Lasker, who said he had never voted for a Democrat, for any office, until the Indiana primary in May. “We all wanted to make sure we weren’t a little crazy.”
Republican anger over the Iraq war and the economy has left some advisers to Mr. Obama hopeful that they can capture pockets of Republican votes on Election Day in states like Alaska, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota and Virginia. Advisers also said they had recently begun emphasizing Mr. Obama’s ties to Republicans as a way to make undecided independent voters more comfortable with him.
In recent weeks, Obama aides have met with Republican leaders in crucial states to strategize about wooing undecided voters. The campaign is considering inviting Republicans to speak at the Democratic convention. Obama aides pointed to a defense by Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, a critic of the war, after Senator John McCain’s campaign ran an advertisement attacking Mr. Obama. And they have tapped sympathetic Republican brand names like Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of the former president, to reach out to party members.
Obama advisers say support from Republican voters could be critical if Mr. McCain makes gains in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states recent Democratic presidential nominees have carried but where Mr. Obama is struggling among working-class white voters.
Based on recent polls, as well as interviews with Obama advisers, Republican voters are not moving to Mr. Obama at a greater pace than they moved to Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004. In the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted this month, 9 percent of Republicans said they would vote for Mr. Obama if the election were held today; at the same point in 2004, 6 percent said they would have supported Mr. Kerry, a statistically insignificant difference.
But analysts also note that sizable numbers of voters who typically support Republicans — or were solidly behind President Bush at this point in 2000 and 2004 — remain undecided about Mr. McCain.
“There aren’t a lot of people on the Republican side who are saying yes to Obama — though there are more of them,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “But uncertainty about McCain raises the possibility of Republican defections down the road.”
The Obama campaign is not overstating its expectations about Republican support. Aides are concentrating organizing and polling on independents and Democrats, and are working to leverage two potential advantages this year: increased Democratic voter registration and black voters energized by the prospect of the first African-American nominee.
Yet advisers say that Mr. Obama’s emphatic message that he is not a partisan politician — combined with the unpopularity of President Bush and some qualms about Mr. McCain’s positions, temperament and age — may attract disaffected Republicans.
“Obama seems like a leader who can deal with challenges that are highly complex, nuanced and interconnected,” Ms. Eisenhower said, “and he has the language and communication skills and temperament to engage a set of world leaders who are his generation.”
Brian Rogers, a McCain spokesman, said the Obama campaign’s outreach to Republicans was nothing more than bluster. “The real battleground is middle-of-the-road swing voters, and John McCain has enormous appeal for them based on his history as a maverick, his independence and his experience,” Mr. Rogers said.
Mr. Obama is hardly a perfect candidate for Republicans. Some say they loathe his support for abortion rights but have decided, after the failed 35-year campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade, that they could accept a Democratic president who pledges to work to decrease abortions, as Mr. Obama has.
His multilateral approach to foreign policy disturbs some Republican supporters, who worry that he will indulge European interests, cozy up to the United Nations and engage Iran and North Korea. And some Democrats may end up breaking with Mr. Obama over Israel, given his concern with Palestinian issues (though he strongly supports Israel).
And the idea of a Barack Obama-Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid triumvirate, should Democrats still control Congress after the election, is anathema to many Republicans, as well as to independents who believe in the virtue of two-party government. No Republican member of Congress has endorsed Mr. Obama.
Yet concerns about Mr. Obama, several Republicans said, are less immediate and visceral than the anger at the Bush administration over the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and to a lesser degree over foreign policy decisions like support for Pakistan despite its failings at capturing terrorists.
“Some Republicans are so distressed with the state of their party that they might be for Obama if they don’t see him as a threat to their interests,” said David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. “Going after Republicans and getting some will only make him more acceptable to people who vote Republican.”
Mike Murphy, a Republican media consultant who advised Mr. McCain in his presidential bid in 2000, said he believed that Mr. Obama would probably win more Republican votes this fall than Mr. Kerry did in 2004. But he said that most Republicans would ultimately stand behind Mr. McCain and that the Obama campaign’s pitch, instead, could end up proving far more helpful with white independent swing voters.
“The Obama campaign is dripping with money, so they can afford to fool around with Republicans, especially since the McCain campaign is challenged,” Mr. Murphy said, referring to Republican concern that the McCain bid has been unfocused at times. “Whether Obama pulls in a big number of swing voters this fall depends on whether McCain comes to life.”
An invigorated McCain campaign, though, is not what some Republicans want. Even some who once supported President Bush say that they have tired of the party’s hawkishness, unstinting support for the war and attacks on privacy, and that they believe Mr. Obama offers fresher thinking than Mr. McCain or others in both parties.
“I really worry McCain would just continue most of these wrongheaded policies,” said Rita E. Hauser, a prominent philanthropist and former Bush fund-raiser who supports Mr. Obama. “I don’t want to become a Democrat; I just want a new direction and then a chance for the Republican Party to get back to its roots.”
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