DENVER -- The newly crowned Democratic ticket heads to Beaver, Pa., Friday for the first joint campaign appearance on what they are calling the "On the Road to Change" bus tour of battleground states.They won't be alone. Soon-to-be official GOP nominee John McCain is bound for southwestern Pennsylvania, as well, but he'll be on his way to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.Barack Obama and his new running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, will leave Denver Friday, hours after Obama gave his convention acceptance speech Thursday night.The tickets' wives -- Michelle Obama and Jill Biden -- will accompany them. On Saturday, they will all head towards Ohio and Michigan -- also expected to be hotly contested states.On the way, they'll come close to crossing paths with McCain, who is expected to introduce his running mate Friday in Dayton, Ohio before showcasing his new partner at a later rally at Consol Energy Park near Pittsburgh area.The dueling appearances highlight Pennsylvania's role as a battleground of the fall campaign. Democrats have carried the state in each of the last four presidential elections, although President Bush made it close in both 2000 and 2004. Recent polls have depicted consistent but less than overwhelming leads for Obama in the competition for the state's 21 electoral votes.On Thursday, Biden emphasized the importance of Pennsylvania in a breakfast meeting with the state's delegation in Denver."This is not hyperbole: We cannot win without Pennsylvania," Biden said at a breakfast.A Time/CNN survey released this week put the Pennsylvania race at 48 percent for Obama and 43 percent for McCain. In a recent Quinnipiac University survey, it was Obama, 49 percent; McCain, 42 percent. Franklin and Marshall College's most recent survey in mid-August found a 46 percent Obama to 41 percent McCain margin.Obama lost the Pennsylvania primary in April by just over 9 points to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. That contest saw a surge in Democratic registration that the Obama camp hopes will translate into a winning margin in November. But McCain is fiercely contesting the state.David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, said earlier this week that the Obama forces are confident they will hold the state. He noted that the Democratic Party had added 316,000 to their registration rolls before the primary while GOP registration fell by roughly 60,000.The coinciding Obama-McCain itineraries are a familiar aftermath of recent party nominations. Former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore crossed Pennsylvania by bus after winning their nominations in New York City in 1992.In 2000, the morning after the GOP's Philadelphia convention, President Bush traveled to Pittsburgh to begin a whistle-stop tour that would take him across Ohio and into Michigan.In the days immediately following the Democratic convention in 2004, Sen. John F. Kerry and running mate Sen. John Edwards were on a bus tour traveling west through western Pennsylvania at the same time that Bush was on his own bus heading east from Ohio to a rally at the David Lawrence Convention Center.The Denver Rocky Mountain News contributed to this report.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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