Uncharacteristically Low Turnout at Rally for Obama in Green Bay

At a campaign stop in Green Bay to shore up support and quell a McCain-Palin surge that has a state race once solidly in Obama's corner now a dead heat, 4,000 fewer voters turned out to see Obama than showed up for John McCain and Sarah Palin a week ago.

From the Chicago Sun-Times, via Drudge:

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Hoping to shore up support in his suddenly undependable backyard, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama flew here Monday to talk about how he’d handle economic crises as president.

Recent polls have shown that Wisconsin — once pretty solidly in Obama’s column — is now a statistical dead heat between Obama and Republican John McCain.

“You all know that you hold this election in your hands,” Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat who said he worked on ethics legislation with Obama, told a crowd of about 6,000 cheering Obama fans in the arena next to Lambeau Field. “We just barely won this state for Al Gore in 2000 and we just barely won this state for John Kerry in 2004.”

The numbers in Wisconsin and Minnesota are getting close enough that the Obama campaign closed its 11 campaign offices in North Dakota and moved the 50 staffers there to these two states.

Just a week ago, John McCain and his vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin — who can bring out crowds the way Obama can — appeared in this same stadium, Resch Center, to a crowd of 10,000 fans. There were an uncharacteristic amount of empty orange seats for Obama’s rally.

Obama also called upon residents in next-door Illinois to cross the border into Wisconsin and help get out the vote. Illinois, Barack Obama's home state, remains solidly in his corner. The McCain-Palin campaign is not actively campaigning there. Also, as stated in the Sun-Times report, the Obama campaign recently closed its North Dakota offices and moved its staffers into Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are sure to be critical battleground states all the way to Election Day.