Could California, the so-called land of Hollywood liberals and rollerblades, a place whose cultural life consisted, Woody Allen once said, of the freedom to make a right turn at a red light, soon be Bush country?
The opinion polls in this vast state would suggest not. Vice-President Al Gore has consistently held a seven-point advantage here and still does. But Mr Bush is barnstorming the state in person, forcing Mr Gore to devote resources and energy to a place he thought he would be able to overlook.
Fresno, an agricultural hub known for raisins and artichokes halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was the site on Monday of an enthusiastic overflow crowd for Mr Bush. Nearly 8,000 people crammed into the city's Convention Centre. The agricultural supporters waved green and gold signs while the military veterans displayed blue and white placards.
"Let's astound the pundits!" Mr Bush exhorted the crowd as he predicted he would win the state and its 54 electoral college votes, one-fifth of the number needed to win the Presidency.
Joined on stage by the actor Chuck Norris and the former candidate, Senator John McCain, Mr Bush said his tax plan, which would benefit high income-earners, would "fuel the economy".
Earlier in the day, Mr Bush held a similar rally in Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles. His repeated appearances here, and his apparent conviction that he has a decent chance of winning, have energised local Republican Party officials and activists. Mr Bush has also been wise to focus on the state's Latino population, a group that voted for Ronald Reagan.
In a satellite appearance before Latino supporters, Mr Bush discussed his campaign.
"We have 310 county and local headquarters. Twenty-five thousand volunteers have joined our cause. They've delivered two million pieces of literature door to door. They've made a million and half phone calls and handed out 200,000 signs and a quarter-million bumper stickers," Mr Bush said.
California Democrats, while maintaining that Mr Gore will win here, are frustrated that their candidate has not spent money on television advertising. By contrast, Mr Bush has spent more advertising money in California in the last week than in any of the swing states, more than $1.8 million in the last week alone. Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, has reportedly pleaded with the Gore campaign to pour needed ads into the state.
"Everybody is getting nervous," said Ms Shelley Mandell, a Los Angeles lawyer and Democratic Party activist. "You hear it everywhere. You can't imagine that Bush could win here. But he's on television all the time and Gore isn't. It's going to come down to who gets their vote out."
Like others, Ms Mandell is concerned that the national Gore campaign suffered from overconfidence, forgetting that "liberal" California was ruled by Ronald Reagan for many years and indeed sent him to the Presidency for two terms.
California was also the home and political base of a congressman named Richard Nixon before he became president. Outside of clearly liberal San Francisco and Los Angeles lies a state of deeply conservative and even right-wing voters in places like Orange County, home of the Nixon Library.