By Richard S. Dunham in New York

Updated: 4:00 p.m. ET Sept. 8, 2004

Even before the balloons and confetti rained down on the GOP faithful in Madison Square Garden, the Bush campaign was claiming victory, after a fashion. With several polls showing that the President had erased Democrat John Kerry's small lead, the President's supporters declared that the dynamic in the race now favored George W., not a rival who had spent much of August in a defensive crouch. "We're where I thought we'd be on the day after Labor Day," says chief Bush strategist Matthew Dowd.

Yet as Dowd knows, it's not the popular vote that counts, since state-by-state Electoral College numbers determine the winner. And big mo' or no, Bush still faces a tough job of reaching the magic number of 270 electoral votes. Indeed, efforts to piece together an electoral majority have been complicated by a series of local political obstacles in key battlegrounds. The challenges range from wobbly state economies to demographic shifts and not-in-my-backyard environmental fights.

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