THEY CALL it the Kerry-Bush Road. Between Toledo and Dayton, Ohio, live some of the most undecided voters in the state which, with only five days left before the poll, is still tantalising both candidates with its much-touted “key to victory”.

Ohio is the Wizard of Oz state. A century ago Republicans here won what became a 30-year domination of the American presidency — in an 1896 campaign which, critics argue, also inspired the story of Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion.

The way in which Ohio’s favourite wizard, President William McKinley, defeated the radical leader of workers, farmers and anti-war protesters, William Jennings Bryan, has been keenly studied by George W. Bush’s strategists. This is where modern American campaign science began — and, though the policy disagreements may be different, this is where the bitter battle for the White House in 2004 appears likely to end.

John Kerry is back in Toledo tonight. Whenever he and John Edwards have pleaded for last-minute Ohio support this week they have followed closely this new Yellow Brick Road. They need the support of every rusted factory worker and straw-stuffed farmer they can find if they are to defeat the President in a state which, according to the history books, is essential to any Republican triumph.

The White House is their Emerald City. When George Bush is mocked here as a puppet of his handlers, with radio-transmitters between his shoulder blades in debate and Dick Cheney at his side during congressional interrogations, he is “the wonderful President of Oz” — with oil and financial backers working invisibly behind the curtain.

Who, they ask, was the real Cowardly Lion during the Vietnam War — or during the wars in Iraq? Was it Kerry, whose Swift Boat “buddies” are up and down the road every day damning and praising his prowess? Or was it Bush, who missed Vietnam but, as even his opponents concede, gave firm military leadership in the weeks after the attack on the twin towers?

The President himself was again on this same road yesterday, at Lima (pronounced as in Limey), among factory workers who back his war on terror, share his beliefs on abortion but worry about the disappearance of their jobs. Toledo, once car windscreen capital of the world, was where Laura Bush began her own solo campaign to ensure that Ohio’s 20 electoral college votes stay in her husband’s hands. The chief White House strategist and committed history student, Karl Rove, has described his boss’s re-election run as “like running for Governor in Ohio”.

Anyone who cares about politics and lives around Route I-75 has been able to see more of the President, his White House team and his Demo- cratic challengers than at any time in their lives. Those who do not care have had to endure more television advertising, from both sides, than anywhere else in the country.

The face of George Bush, with global military reach or a hug for a shattered orphan of 9/11, appears more than 100 times a day, in virtually every commercial break, overwhelming the normal gutter repairers and bed salesmen. “I never thought I’d look forward to the Banner Mattress ads coming back,” said John Boelner, a jaded postman, on Madison Street last week.

Kerry pops up no less often with sonorous calls for better-paid jobs, healthcare and a flu jab for all. The Democrats try new messages all the time. Bush is McKinley-like in consistency. But to Boelner the abuse of soundbites by both men — and the lack of straight talk by either — is at the heart of the problem for the region and the country.

According to John Block, bow-tied, white-pocket-handkerchiefed publisher of The Toledo Blade, many newspaper readers have found it “wearying to be at electoral Ground Zero”. But for local businesses and The Blade itself, founded in the first “Toledo War” between Ohio and Michigan in 1835, this second war has been a boon.

This is not a place blessed with natural November excitement. Drizzling ice from Lake Erie falls among dark, fallow farmland and the walls of dead factories. After taking in a glass tycoon’s El Greco legacy at the Art Museum, lovers of charismatic Christianity might try a night with Pastor Rod Parsley and the latest gig of his “Silent No More Tour”. Or there is the Chablis Club, offering “male only entertainment” in a road where the only remaining male workers cut up machine tools for scrap.

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