Town hall meeting set for bellwether state
Kerry and Bush working hard in Ohio
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| | ON CNN TV |  E-mail questions that you want the Bush and Kerry campaigns to answer at the upcoming town hall meeting in Canton, Ohio. CNN's Paula Zahn will anchor the meeting live at 8 p.m. ET on August 18.
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(CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry and President Bush signaled Ohio's significance in the general election by heading there right after the Democratic convention -- and now CNN's Paula Zahn is following suit.
Zahn will anchor a town hall meeting on August 18, in Canton, Ohio, the county seat of Stark County, one of the most hotly contested areas in this battleground state. The show will be broadcast live between 8 and 9 p.m. ET on CNN's "Paula Zahn NOW."
Some 200 likely voters, many of them still undecided about their presidential choice, will pose questions to members of the Bush and Kerry campaigns. The campaigns will also field queries sent online, via CNN.com.
The discussion will focus on Iraq, the "war on terror," the economy, health care and education.
The meeting will take place in one of the most reliable bellwether states -- and counties -- in presidential elections.
Nine of the last 10 presidential victors have won the Buckeye State, and the same has held true for Stark County, according to The Associated Press. No Republican -- from Abraham Lincoln to President Bush -- has ever earned a White House trip without winning Ohio.
Bush narrowly beat Vice President Al Gore in Ohio by 4 percentage points in 2000, securing the state's then 21 electoral votes en route to a razor-tight national victory. (This year, Ohio will have 20 electoral votes; 270 are needed to win the election.)
But the GOP incumbent has by no means wrapped up a repeat.
A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, released just before the Democrats' July 26-29 convention in Boston, Massachusetts, showed Kerry with a slim lead at 48 percent, followed by Bush at 43 percent and independent candidate Ralph Nader at 5 percent, in a survey of 639 likely Ohio voters. Kerry's advantage went to 6 percentage points -- 51 to 45 percent -- without Nader as an option. The sampling error, in both cases, was plus or minus 5 percentage points. (Full story)
The two top candidates have focused heavily on Ohio, and Stark County in particular.
In the last three months, Bush has taken two bus tours through the state, which has been particularly hard hit by job losses.
At a July 31 event at the Canton Memorial Civic Center, Bush acknowledged that economic recovery "lags in places like eastern Ohio. I know that. I'm aware of that. ... We must have a president who understands in order to keep jobs at home, America must be the best place to do business."
Kerry has also been pushing hard in the Buckeye State, making frequent visits including immediately before and after the convention.
In Boston, Democrats gave Ohio delegates the symbolic honor of putting Kerry over the top, cementing his place as the party's presidential nominee. In his acceptance speech one night later, Kerry referred to steel worker he met in Canton whose job was sent overseas.
The reasoning behind such efforts to target Ohio is simple, said a senior Kerry campaign adviser in Boston: "If we win Ohio, we win the election."
