DaytonDailyNews.com

NEW LEBANON — Barack Obama and John McCain have a lot of work ahead of them, if interviews during the last two weeks with more than two dozen voters in eastern New Lebanon are any indication.

Voters in the Jackson-New Lebanon-B precinct have mirrored with amazing precision Ohio voters in the last four presidential elections. And right now, the bellwether precinct in the working-class western Montgomery County community is up for grabs.

Two-thirds of the 25 voters in the March 4 primary interviewed for this story are either undecided or unhappily leaning in one direction.

Hillary Clinton got far and away the most votes in the primary — more than twice as many as any other candidate from either party — but support for Obama, whom she now supports, is anything but automatic in New Lebanon.

Of the 12 Clinton voters interviewed, only half have decided to vote for Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee. of the other six, one is leaning toward Obama, but five are undecided.

On the Republican side, support for McCain, who outpolled former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee by only four votes in March, is decidedly tepid. Five voters who supported McCain in the primary say they'll vote for him in November. But seven others, most of whom voted for other candidates, say they are either undecided or reluctantly leaning toward the Republican.

Don Mox, who retired last week from the General Motors plant in Moraine, is an indication of the challenge McCain and Obama face. Mox voted for Huckabee in the primary, but says he doesn't know how he'll vote in November.

"I think we've got a poor choice right now," the 56-year-old said. "I don't have much faith in either one of them to tell you the truth."