YORK — The presidential race in Pennsylvania may well come down to a fight for the hearts and minds of people like Cindy Moran.

She's afraid that Republican John McCain will continue economic policies that led to the current financial crisis. But Democrat Barack Obama's remark last April that rural Pennsylvanians cling to their guns and religion still makes her uneasy.

"It's just, I don't know what he's thinking," Moran said of Obama as she pondered the candidates after coffee at a rural farmers market near the Maryland border. "I don't know what he wants, really. It'll be a last-minute decision, I think."

There are plenty of reasons things should be going Obama's way in Pennsylvania.

The state was a Democratic highlight in 2006 as the party took control of Congress, picking up a Senate seat and four House seats here — more than in any other state. Since 2004, when President Bush barely lost the state to John Kerry, the Democratic advantage in party registration over the GOP has swelled to more than 1 million — including 100,000 voters who have joined the party since the state's April primaries.

Even history is on Obama's side: A GOP presidential candidate hasn't won the state since 1988.

But this was Hillary Rodham Clinton country during the primary elections — she defeated Obama decisively.

And the lead Obama had over McCain in polling here before the party conventions has dwindled. That's partly because of a burst of enthusiasm for McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, but Obama also has been struggling in Pennsylvania to attract the white working-class voters who flocked to Clinton in the primaries.

Both GOP candidates were campaigning in the state Monday.

The stakes are enormous: With 8.5 million registered voters and 21 electoral votes, Pennsylvania could decide who takes the White House.

In McCain, Republicans say they've found a good fit for independent-minded voters in the state, who tend to be socially conservative. More than 10 percent of Pennsylvanians are military veterans, and the state ranks third in the percentage of people 65 and older, offering common ground with a 72-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war.

There are Democratic strongholds in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and conservative bastions in Pennsylvania's rural central and northern regions. But the state's middle-class Philadelphia suburbs and old industrial towns are home to many voters willing to vote across party lines.

Some haven't forgotten Obama's comment during a San Francisco fundraiser in April that bitter voters in rural Pennsylvania cling to guns and religion because of their economic frustrations.

The state has fared better economically than its Rust Belt counterparts, Ohio and Michigan. But the number of residents who were unemployed reached a five-year high in August, and there's plenty of worry about the economy and government spending.

Larry Fales Sr., 65, of York, a retired railroad worker, is one of the Democrats who hasn't warmed up to Obama. Taking a break from the Hungry Parrot Pizza Co. where he helps out his son, Fales said he would have voted for Clinton, but now he'll vote for McCain.

Obama is "great at giving speeches and everything like that, but I just don't trust his past, and he promises too much," Fales said. "I don't care who it is, no one can give what he promises he's going to give."

Another Democrat, Robert L. Hamilton Jr., 77, a Korean War veteran and retired postal worker, said he's leaning toward Obama but isn't sure about some others.

"The bad part about Obama is you're going to have too many people vote against him because of his race," Hamilton said.

Reaching out to voters like Fales and Hamilton, Obama selected as his running mate Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, a Scranton native with lunch bucket roots.