The latest election angle explored in the press seems to be the efforts of the Republican party to get out the vote in Amish communities in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Amish vote almost exclusively Republican (because of their strong faith, and because they are pro-life), but they rarely vote. Turnout is usually around 10 percent, according to the article I read (no Diebold at their polling places, though)
The best line from a Kerry spokesman? "If I know Republicans and their grass-roots operations, they'll spend most of their time trying to phone bank the Amish." This link is from Salon, although I think it's a story on the news wires, since I also saw something about it in the free rag I read on the train.
Boy, that's digging deep into the base.
A bit like some Catholics, the Amish man interviewed for the article, although anti-war, gave Bush a pass on the war, while lauding him for being anti-abortion (has it occurred to any of these people that Bush has been president for nearly a full term, and all they got was that ambiguous partial-birth abortion ban? haven't they realized what a kabuki dance this issue is for the main portion of the Republican party?) Once again, I think the whole sex/power/women business is why abortion is so much more of an attractive "single-issue" issue than say, war, for some people.
Incidentally, the Amish are currently being studied by doctors and scientists because they have a much higher than normal incidence of certain rare genetic diseases. Boy--wonder how that happened?