PETERBOROUGH, N.H. - It's a warm fall morning in southwest New Hampshire and people are streaming onto a farm to see Barack Obama speak in front of a red clapboard barn. They are young, old, walking, in wheelchairs, dressed up, and dressed down - about 1,000 in all.
The gathering is massive for Peterborough, population 6,000, but hardly surprising: For months, Obama has drawn huge crowds in big cities, small hamlets, and every place in between, a reflection of the infectious excitement his candidacy has generated.
"We just have to turn the people into votes," a young, clipboard-wielding Obama volunteer tells a man arriving for the rally.
That simple imperative crystallizes perfectly the challenge facing Obama as the Democratic primary race enters the crucial three months before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire begin choosing the party's nominee. His powerful and growing grass-roots network - reaffirmed by thousands of new donors in the third quarter of this year - has reached historic proportions. But his poll numbers in early primary states are largely flat.
A survey released last week by the University of New Hampshire showed rival Hillary Clinton leading Obama 43 percent to 20 percent among likely Democratic voters, matching her largest margin in the Granite State. Outside of Iowa, where polls indicate a tight three-way race, Clinton also holds substantial leads.
Pundits, commentators, and even some Obama supporters have begun to ask: How will he move the needle?
"I don't understand why he's 20 points behind Hillary," said Timothy Steele, an Obama enthusiast from Hancock, N.H., who runs a medical-device company. "It's really at a point when it should start being urgent."
At the same time, voters in New Hampshire and Iowa are notoriously hard to pin down in polls. Even many Clinton supporters are not fully committed - only 17 percent of respondents in the UNH survey said they had definitely made up their minds. And the TV ad wars have yet to begin in earnest.
"He's still in the game, and he's still hunting for votes. He's just an underdog in this race," said Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's 2000 campaign and is neutral this cycle. "Barack is going into the final 13 weeks of the campaign in great shape."
Obama's advisers say they are confident they have the organization, the buzz, the money, and the candidate with a message the country is hungry for. And they say that, despite the intense media scrutiny and onslaught of state and national polls, most people have yet to really focus on the race.
"The reality is both sides know [the polls] don't count until January," said Ned Helms, cochairman of Obama's New Hampshire campaign.
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, argued that most voters not with Clinton at this point will never be, and that gives Obama a huge opportunity if he can capitalize on it.
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