Former President Bill Clinton came to Washington & Jefferson College to ask a corner of the state that rolled up big margins for his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the Pennsylvania primary, to switch that allegiance to Sen. Barack Obama.

"I was for somebody else," he acknowledged to hundreds of Democratic partisans yesterday evening, "I thought she was the finest person I ever supported for public office."

But then he described a button now worn by many former Clinton supporters that reads, "Hillary sent me."

"I guarantee you, she sent me. ... She's got me out here hustling around, and it's an honor to do it," he told the crowd.

A skeptical parsing of his words left open the question of whether he would have been out campaigning for the Democratic nominee of his own volition, rather than his wife's instructions, but in his speech last night, as in his address to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, he made an unambiguous argument for Mr. Obama's election.

The former president, drawing more on logic than emotion, maintained that the nominee whom he would join later in the evening at a rally in Orlando, Fla., had the best philosophy, policies and decision-making ability in the race.

"It is not a close question," he said. "That is why this part of Pennsylvania ought to say. 'OK, we voted for Hillary overwhelmingly ... but on Tuesday, we're going to be there for Barack Obama.'"

Mr. Clinton was accompanied by Gov. Ed Rendell and Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, who's facing a closely contested election for perhaps the first time in his long career. In their remarks both the governor and the former president took pains to urge the crowd to turn out for Mr. Murtha.

No one mentioned the ill-timed remarks that have helped make Mr. Murtha's re-election bid so unusually interesting -- his observations, since apologized for, that Mr. Obama would have a tougher time in Western Pennsylvania because of its "racist" tendencies.

But those remarks, repeated everywhere from conservative blogs to the opening skit of last weekend's "Saturday Night Live," lent an unspoken but hard-to-ignore context for Mr. Murtha's opening words -- "I'm proud to represent this patriotic, hard-working district."

Polls continue to show that this region represents one of Mr. Obama's stiffer challenges on the Pennsylvania battleground against Republican candidate John McCain, but a flurry of new surveys suggests that it has not kept him from a commanding position in the state overall.

The latest Franklin and Marshall College poll, released yesterday, showed Mr. Obama ahead in Pennsylvania, by 53 percent to 40 percent, a sharp jump in the Democrat's margin from the last F&M survey earlier this month.

Quinnipiac University's new numbers show the Democrat with a similarly wide margin, 53 percent to 41 percent, while the Marist Poll found the state's voters favoring Mr. Obama, 52 percent to 39 percent.

Those results came along with other battleground state surveys offering more good news for Democrats.

In Colorado, a CNN-Time poll found Mr. Obama up 53 percent to 45 percent. In Virginia, another state won easily by President Bush, Mr. Obama led, 53 percent to 44 percent in the CNN tally.

In Florida, polls continued to show Mr. Obama with a narrow edge in a state that would effectively break the back of the McCain candidacy if it were to be captured by the intense, amply funded focus of the Obama forces.

Mr. McCain was also in Florida yesterday, mixing events with a Joe-the-plumber economic theme with a security roundtable designed to raise doubts about the prospect of Mr. Obama as commander in chief.

After appearing in Tampa with national security advisers, including Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor and homeland security secretary, Mr. McCain said of his opponent, "The question is whether this is a man who has what it takes to protect America from Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and other grave threats in the world. And he has given you no reason to answer in the affirmative."

It was an argument that would have resonated with some of the Republican demonstrators outside the Clinton/Obama rally in a W&J gymnasium. About 15 McCain supporters waved signs and solicited honks from passing cars, doing their best to establish that Washington wasn't all Obama Country.

"I believe McCain has the experience to be president, Obama doesn't," said Constance Petros, a junior political science major at the school.

Jacob Mellor, a freshman chemistry major, waved a McCain-Palin sign while wearing shorts and flip-flops in defiance of the frigid weather. "Experience -- he has it; Obama doesn't. [McCain] has what it takes to keep the country safe."

This county and the surrounding region were inhospitable to Mr. Obama in the primary. Statewide, he lost to Mrs. Clinton by nearly 10 points, but here her margins were overwhelming. Mrs. Clinton carried Washington County, with more than 70 percent of the Democratic vote. In Greene County, she won, 75 percent to 25 percent, and in Fayette, it was a daunting 79 percent to 21 percent.

The campaign's focus on Pennsylvania will continue. The vice presidential candidates will both be in the state today. The Republican, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, will be in Erie this afternoon and she and the Democrat, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, will be in Williamsport later. Mr. Biden will travel to an evening rally in Allentown. Mrs. Palin is scheduled to be in Latrobe tomorrow.