In a downtrodden pocket of Arnold overlooking the Allegheny River, broken-windowed and boarded-up houses sit next to bustling bungalows with porches crammed full of Halloween decorations.

On one stretch of Fourth Avenue, you'll see an "Obama-Biden" sign directly across the street from "Another Democrat for McCain," mixed with placards reading "No Trespassing" and "Section 8 Accepted."

And on that same street, you'll find Kathleen Radaker, whose yard is neat and bare but whose mind is cluttered and confused about this election.

Mrs. Radaker, 65, has never voted for a Republican. If Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton were still running, not only would she be voting Democratic, but she'd also be out there volunteering, she said, grinning as she pumped her thin fist into the air.

But now, she's just not sure.

"I'm going back and forth," she said. "I've always voted Democrat, I was on the verge of going Republican this year and now I'm swinging back the other way."

In Arnold and other sections of Westmoreland County, the presidential election is still very much up for grabs -- a fact not lost on either campaign. George W. Bush took Westmoreland County in the last two presidential elections, despite a clear majority of registered Democrats over Republicans. And Mrs. Clinton beat Sen. Barack Obama by nearly 40 percentage points in Westmoreland in the Pennsylvania primary.

Democrat Tom Balya is chair of the three-member Westmoreland County Board of Commissioners and an Obama supporter. There's political tension evident even at the very top of his Web site, where, in a red font, he's written, "For those gun-loving, beer-drinking, God-fearing people who support Barack Obama, you have company" and included a link to the rednecks4obama.com Web site

Mr. Balya doesn't expect Mr. Obama to win Westmoreland County -- in his mind, losing by less than Sen. John F. Kerry did (22,000) four years ago would be a victory.

He said he sees yards with signs for every Democrat on the ballot in Westmoreland County except Mr. Obama, and can't help but think that race and religion are the two factors driving registered Democrats toward Mr. McCain.

"Some people's priorities tend to be those issues," he said. "The Republicans have made that analysis. That's why they haven't walked away."

Indeed, even with polls showing Mr. Obama leading by more than 10 percentage points statewide, there's a feeling among some, particularly in the McCain campaign, that the race might be closer than it appears.

Count Mrs. Radaker among them. "I don't know how they're doing these polls," she said. "If we're sitting here saying, 'This is going to be the first time we're going Republican,' other people are doing the same."

When Mrs. Radaker bought her house next to a school in Arnold 30 years ago, it was "a beautiful town" where you could sleep with your doors open. Now, the school is a halfway house and she's says she's heard that if you put up a McCain sign, you'll get a brick thrown through your window. "In this neighborhood, I believe it," she said.

Religious trinkets and paintings hang on her kitchen walls, but pill bottles holding her cancer medications crowd out a porcelain angel in a kitchen display cabinet.

While she used to consider herself and her steelworker husband middle-class, she said, health care costs of $400 a month in medications alone have pushed them closer to "making it from payday to payday."

She didn't hesitate before stating "the economy" when a political canvasser for the union organization Working America came by her house on Saturday and asked her to name her biggest political concern.

What's drawing Mrs. Radaker at least part way to Mr. Obama is her sense that he has the interests of the middle-class at heart. He's promised to create jobs, which would be a good thing, she says, given all the "empty places" in Arnold.

On the other hand, she has a "We Support Our Troops" sticker on her front window, and is drawn to Mr. McCain's military experience and his promises to lower taxes.

Most of her family is voting for Mr. McCain, she said, and they've been "beating my ear" that Mr. Obama is Muslim, that he's involved with terrorists and that he won't wear a flag pin -- all much repeated and much refuted claims. And she's also heard from people who won't vote for Mr. Obama because of his race -- a factor that she flatly says is unimportant to her.

"We were raised that black and white don't mix but that was the old way," she says. "There's a lot that's confused on that right now, especially in my generation."

One of her 12 grandchildren stops by, holding one of her six great-grandchildren. Her granddaughter says she would have voted for Mrs. Clinton, but now she's not voting at all.

"I'm letting people feed into my head," said Mrs. Radaker. "When I finally make my call, I'm not letting nobody know. That way they can't get on me."

One street over from Mrs. Radaker, 80-year-old Oryst Balaban also says he has yet to make up his mind. He usually votes for Democrats, he says, but is having trouble accepting Mr. Obama's support of abortion rights.

"The abortion problem is a real big problem in this country," he said. "If he gets in there, it'll get worse."

It was largely the issue of abortion that spurred Diane Montagne -- for the first time in her life -- to go door-to-door stumping for Mr. McCain.

"I honestly fear for this country if Obama is elected," said Ms. Montagne, of Latrobe, who has started a business teaching religious classes to home-schooled children. "It's clear that this election, there is a definite battle between good and evil and I feel a responsibility to defend the rights of the unborn."

Westmoreland County tends to vote Democratic along the rivers and Republican along the Route 30 corridor, said Mr. Balya, and it was in the McCain-friendly Hampshire Heights subdivision in Hempfield where the Republican campaign chose to canvass on Saturday.

Many of the large and well-maintained lawns sport McCain signs, and those reached at their doors expressed overwhelming support for Mr. McCain. But even there, political lines weren't quite clear-cut.

Standing on the doorstep of Mary Hostert, a retired state trooper and enthusiastic supporter of Mr. McCain, Ms. Montagne expressed her disappointment with polls showing Catholics roughly evenly divided between the two candidates.

Ms. Hostert said that her 15-year-old daughter had come home from school one day saying that she would vote for Obama, though now she's changed her mind.

"The lines are very gray now," said Ms. Hostert. "We don't have what we used to have with hard Democrats and hard Republicans."

Up the street, 36-year-old Michael Robinson would have considered himself a "hard Republican" until a few months ago. And so Mr. Robinson, who spent four years in the Navy, admits that it's strange that he plans to vote for Mr. Obama.

The change came slowly, he said. Seeing Mr. Obama campaigning day after day in Pennsylvania during the primary, he started to think, "Here's a guy I could vote for."

Mr. Robinson had originally been excited about Mr. McCain, but watched in dismay as, in his mind, his campaign failed to get off the ground. "He dropped off the radar screen," he said. "John McCain just never gave me anything to latch on to."

Mr. Robinson didn't approve of Mr. McCain's negative ads, but it was choice of Sarah Palin, whom Mr. Robinson views as grossly unqualified, that was the final straw.

If Mr. McCain had picked Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota or one of the other vice presidential possibilities, "there's no question I'd be looking at him in a whole different light," he said.

It was the building enthusiasm for Mr. Obama, both locally and worldwide, that pushed Kathleen McCormick, a middle school teacher in Belle Vernon, into volunteering for Mr. McCain. "It alarmed me how many uninformed people were throwing their allegiance toward Obama," she said.

Wearing a leopard-print turtleneck, white McCain-Palin T-shirt, pink hoodie, brown puffy vest and pink Sarah Cuda baseball cap -- and somehow looking stylish doing so -- Ms. McCormick charged up the driveways of the houses in Hampshire Heights, not just handing out literature but encouraging residents to come down to McCain headquarters and volunteer.

Political confusion and transformation are nothing new to Ms. McCormick, of Greensburg, a 54-year-old middle-school social studies teacher. It was during the energy crisis two decades ago, that she herself wrestled with a changing political landscape.

Now, she happily describes herself as a Reagan Democrat who never looked back. "Jimmy Carter, he wanted change," she said. "Be careful what you wish for or you might get it."