PBS NewsHour: What's Driving the Country's Most Coveted Voters?

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The presidential campaign is targeting swing states, including Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida. Gwen Ifill interviews Anna Sale of WNYC's "It's a Free Country," who is traveling through the battleground states. They discuss who these voters are and the issues that drive them.

Transcript

Some of Sale's observations:

Well, we decided to go to Colorado because it's such an interesting state, because it really -- the Obama campaign's Western strategy sort of hinges on winning Colorado.

He's led in the polls there, but that lead over Mitt Romney is shrinking. So, we wanted to go there and see what was going on. The Western strategy is the idea that if the Obama campaign can win Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Iowa, then they could be insulated against losing like Ohio and Florida.

Arriving in Colorado, I was surprised to see the lack of enthusiasm for President Obama. He's had this consistent lead in the polls, but very muted enthusiasm for people who say they plan on voting for him again. And I even met several Obama supporters who said they voted for him four years ago, but they're so dissatisfied. It's not that they are considering voting for Mitt Romney. It's that they're weighing whether they want to go to the polls at all.

Well, I was in county called Adams County (Colorado) this morning. It's a rural county, a farming county. And it went for George W. Bush four years ago and went for Obama -- or -- excuse me -- George W. Bush in 2004 and Obama four years ago.

And people were talking about the drought. They were talking about being afraid about this year's crop. And what's interesting is it stands against what has been a relatively prosperous couple of years for the farming community. So, this is relatively low unemployment in this rural county, but one farmer told me despite that this is a county that has been in terminal decline. He said it.