Campaigns gear up for fall with 100 days until election

WASHINGTON -- The longest presidential election season in American history is about to enter its final stretch.

Count 'em: 100 days to go.

In the time before Nov. 4, running mates will be chosen and platform skirmishes fought, economic reports released and as many as one-third of votes cast early by absentee ballot and at registrars' offices. Will more U.S. troops be pulled out of Iraq? Could a so-called October surprise be sprung, by calculation or catastrophe, that reshapes the campaign's close?

Both campaigns are acutely conscious of the passage of time. At Barack Obama's headquarters in Chicago, a countdown calendar hangs just outside campaign manager David Plouffe's office. The same count appears on white boards throughout John McCain's headquarters in a Virginia suburb of Washington.

Some of the customary rhythms of a presidential campaign were disrupted this year after the Summer Olympics were pushed back two weeks. That squeezed the end-of-summer interval for the political conventions and prompted the GOP to schedule the first major-party convention to take place after Labor Day.

Not that either side has been waiting for the traditional Labor Day kickoff to the general-election campaign.

Now Obama holds a narrow lead over McCain, 45 percent-43 percent, in Gallup's daily tracking poll.

"Neither campaign has made the sale," says Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who helped run presidential campaigns for Ronald Reagan in 1984, Ross Perot in 1992 and Mike Huckabee this year. "The battle is the independent vote, and they don't make up their minds until late."