The Magic and the Message

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The East. This region is the stickiest for Reagan. He has little chance in Maryland, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Although he won every Northeastern state except Rhode Island in 1980, including Pennsylvania and New York, only New Hampshire actually gave him a majority. Yankee prudence might be especially offended by Reagan's profligate budget deficits.

In every New England state, Anderson attracted between 10% and 15% of the 1980 vote. This fall, a majority of the 5.7 million Anderson voters is expected to go to the Democrats. Many of them are members of The Big Chill generation, who tend to be cool on Reagan. Says a White House strategist: "We have problems among those who were of college age during the Viet Nam War."

The crucial states in the East are New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with 77 electoral votes among them. Reagan is probably slightly behind in the first two. John Sears, who managed Reagan's 1980 primary campaign, has intriguing advice for his former boss: he would press hard in New York, drawing the Democrat's money and attention. Thus Mondale, Sears suggests, "would have to say things that turn off the South and West. That way Reagan shores up his base while attacking Mondale's." The G.O.P. believes that the anti-Semitic flickers in Jesse Jackson's campaign have made it possible to attract Democratic Jewish voters, who make up a fifth of the New York electorate.

New Jersey has gone for every Republican since 1968. The recession was mild and the recovery robust. Even Gerald McCann, the Democratic chairman in thickly Democratic Hudson County, will probably support Reagan. His blunt reasoning: "I'll go with the winner." Across the Delaware River, in Pennsylvania, circumstances are different. The recession was unusually severe; thousands of steelworkers are still jobless and angry. "There's a real group of people out there who think [Reagan] is the worst thing that ever sat in that chair," says Edward Stevens, Democratic chairman in Allegheny County. "Maybe they don't blame him for it all. But he hasn't done anything to help them, to give them hope."

The Midwest. The President fares better in Detroit than Pittsburgh. "Reagan is a mystery to a lot of us," says former United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser, "but he is nevertheless very, very effective with the American worker." In Michigan, the auto industry's renaissance seems to have cheered up the working class and increased support for Reagan. Elsewhere around the Great Lakes, Republican prospects look somewhat iffier. Ferraro may be a potent force in Cleveland and industrial northeastern Ohio, and the state G.O.P. seems too sickly and complacent to do much about it. A party drive to register 100,000 voters has signed up 3,200. "People think Reagan has got it won," says Ohio Republican Leader Thomas Van

Meter. "That makes me nervous."

Reagan will win Illinois if its downstate towns, where he grew up, overcome Chicago's Democratic vote.