Fresh from the Republican convention, John McCain’s campaign sees evidence that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is energizing conservatives in the battleground of Ohio — where the 2004 race was settled — while improving its chances in Pennsylvania and several Western states that Barack Obama has been counting on.

Obama’s campaign intends to focus heavily on the economy, especially in light of the mounting job losses, and to keep up the effort to tie the McCain-Palin ticket to the policies of President Bush. It is banking on holding all the states Sen. John Kerry won in 2004 and picking up the additional electoral votes it needs by flipping some combination of Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia into the Democratic column.

With a little more than eight weeks left until Election Day, the two sides are settling into an unusually broad set of state-by-state face-offs, with new advertisements, increased focus on turning out their supporters and tough decisions looming about where to invest time and money.

Aides to Obama said they were preparing new advertisements tailored to issues important in specific states, like ones about the auto industry in Michigan and nuclear waste in Nevada, even as the Democrats pull back ads in Georgia, a reliably Republican state he had sought to put in play by investing heavily in registering new Democratic voters.

Independents, women and Oregon

While fortified turnout from this base is probably not enough to ensure victory for McCain, strategists said, it would be very difficult for him to win without it. In that sense, Palin’s presence on the ticket could be vital.

Some campaign officials hope Palin, an Alaskan, can broaden the ticket’s appeal in the Northwest, possibly gaining traction in Oregon and Washington.

Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said his team was not concerned that independent voters and undecided women might be drawn to Palin, and that the Obama camp did not plan to run hard against her.

“As the post-convention dust settles, we believe a lot of the battleground states will be close, and that this will remain a race between John McCain and Barack Obama,” Plouffe said. “She’ll be out there promoting John McCain’s economic message, which is fine by us because it is so bad for middle-class voters.”

Yet several Republican leaders, both moderates and conservatives, said they were comfortable with the economic message of the McCain-Palin ticket. The Republican ticket is asserting in its advertising and campaigning that electing Obama would mean higher taxes and policies too liberal for most voters.

“Even in the face of job losses and the mortgage crisis, the core Republican message is still appealing: No higher taxes, get government off your back, cut regulations and make us more competitive,” said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, of California.

While McCain aides once believed his appeal to independents might help him win a traditional Democratic state like New Jersey, and Obama aides thought their candidate’s broad appeal could be a lift in traditionally Republican ones like Montana, the emerging battlegrounds picked by both campaigns so far resemble the Bush-Kerry electoral map in 2004 and the Bush-Gore map in 2000.

But Democrats believe that they will still have the advantage, thinking that Bush’s unpopularity, economic discontent and lingering anger over the Iraq war will make it hard for Republicans to carry all the Bush states.

Republicans are hoping that positioning McCain as a maverick for the final two months, even after he courted the right with his pick of Palin, could help them hold the Bush states and win some like New Hampshire, which Bush lost in 2004 but where McCain is popular.

Priority states

In one indication of how McCain defines the battleground and the message he will emphasize to counter the Democratic strategy, the Republican National Committee recently bought television time in 14 states — including five that Kerry won last time around — for an advertisement calling Obama and congressional Democrats “ready to tax, ready to spend, but not ready to lead.”

That advertisement will be shown in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — all Republican states in 2004 that Obama is contesting aggressively this time — and Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic states four years ago that McCain is trying to win over.

Obama chose not to participate in the public financing system for presidential campaigns, freeing him from limits on how much he can spend in particular states.

One indication of the Obama campaign’s priorities can be found in a breakdown of how it is distributing large donations to a special fundraising account it has set up for state parties. The breakdown, provided by an Obama fundraiser, shows the campaign funneling money to traditional battlegrounds like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but also allocating substantial sums to normally solid Republican states like North Carolina.

Obama aides, while recently pulling back commercials in Georgia, are mulling new ads in other states that Bush carried, like Arizona and West Virginia, where the poor economy could help them.

Voter turnout

Both sides are intensifying their efforts in a less visible but potentially more important aspect of presidential politics: identifying their likely supporters, household by household, and ensuring that they show up to vote on Election Day.

Obama has long been seen as having had a head start in that area, drawing in particular on his campaign’s vast army of volunteers for the grunt work of making phone calls, knocking on doors and distributing literature.

Plouffe said the Obama campaign had recruited thousands of neighborhood and precinct captains to concentrate on voter turnout: The campaign has seven offices in Allegheny County alone, around Pittsburgh, and has teams devoted to turning out the estimated 600,000 black residents of Florida who were registered in 2004 but did not vote.

But the McCain campaign, after a slow start, is increasing its efforts as well, building on the sophisticated voter-targeting operation built for Bush four years ago.

Even before the pick, he said, the campaign had stepped up its efforts: While two months ago it made only 20,000 volunteer phone calls and knocks on doors a week, the McCain campaign made 800,000 the week before Palin was selected.

Coming up: The debates

The swing states of 2008 — and how the campaigns will target them

Advertising: Both campaigns have targeted 11 states with ads this week: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. John McCain also has an ad in Minnesota. Barack Obama, however, has expanded the field for now, placing ads in Indiana, Michigan, Montana and North Dakota.

Timing is crucial: Five battlegrounds — Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia — begin distributing absentee ballots between Sept. 19 and Sept. 23.

Bush’s states: McCain must ensure a state like Montana — which voted for Bush 59-39 percent over Kerry in 2004 but has two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor — doesn’t flip. He must shore up North Dakota and hold on to other states Bush won, such as Colorado and Nevada, where there’s been a growth in the population of Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters. It won’t be easy. Obama has the financial resources to keep those states competitive, forcing McCain to divert money he will desperately need in tossup states.

Blue-collar voters: The GOP’s vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, will be McCain’s ambassador to vulnerable Republican “red” states. She’ll cross paths with Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, in small cities and rural hamlets in Ohio and Pennsylvania and in competition for working class white men and women. McCain would be free to promote himself as a maverick and independent in states such as New Hampshire and in the suburbs and exurbs where independent and undecided voters might live.

— The Associated Press

McCain and Obama will face each other in debates three times, each lasting 90 minutes, with one conducted in a town-hall format.

Sept. 26: The first opportunity for the candidates will be at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., with domestic policy as the sole subject.

Oct. 2: Vice presidential debates aren’t decisive, but they can put a campaign on the defensive. The public is likely to tune in to the Oct. 2 Biden-Palin debate for the novelty of it.

Oct. 7: The candidates will meet at Washington University in St. Louis for a town-hall meeting on any subject. McCain likes the format and uses it regularly on the stump.

Oct. 14: A week later, the two will meet at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., to discuss foreign policy.