At a rally in Detroit in March, Hillary Clinton declared that the road to the White House goes through Michigan in 2008.

Six months later, both the Republican and Democrat nominees stopped campaigning in the state as they make their final cases elsewhere.

But this was supposed to be the year that Michigan had a chance of breaking its four-election streak of voting Democrat.

John McCain had the advantage of having campaigned heavily in the state before Michigan's Jan. 15 primary. Barack Obama didn't make an appearance here until May, as having pledged not to campaign in Michigan after the Democratic National Committee stripped the state of its convention delegates for moving up its primary date in violation of party rules.

While Michigan has been in the blue column since Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush in 1992 by 7 points and former Sen. Bob Dole with a 13-point margin in 1996, the past two presidential elections were decided by only a few hundred thousand votes.

In 2000, Al Gore edged George W. Bush 51 percent to 46 percent. In the next election, John Kerry won 51 percent of the vote here.

McCain led in state polls until June, when the gap tightened after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination. The week after the Republican National Convention, about 10 percent of the state's likely voters were undecided and the two hopefuls were polling within three points of each other.

Neck and neck, both campaigns were braced for a fight.

"With the economy being such a big issue in this state, voters were absolutely looking to both candidates to answer the big question of what they were going to do about the economy," said Brent Colburn, spokesman for Obama's Michigan campaign. "We definitely saw it as a state that was going to be in play and was going to be a place we were going to have to fight to win."

And for a while, McCain fought hard for Michigan's 17 electoral votes. The campaign spent nearly $1 million a week here in September. McCain and surrogates made weekly visits after the Republican National Convention.

But on Oct. 2, with polls showing Obama leading by as much as 13 points in the state, McCain deemed Michigan a lost cause and pulled advertising and staffers, re-allocating funds to other battlegrounds.

A state that thought to be the crucial battleground state in September suddenly lost importance. The national media packed up and stopped reporting on the state's economic woes. As Obama's already impressive lead in the polls grew, he too, decided to move some of his staffers to other states.

So what happened to ostensibly decide Michigan's vote a month before Election Day? McCain blew it.

COURTING THE REAGAN DEMOCRATS

To take Michigan, McCain had to win over the state’s infamous Reagan Democrats, white, working-class voters who voted for former President John Kennedy by a 2-to-1 margin in 1960, but got their name in 1980 after they overwhelmingly voted for former President Ronald Reagan.

But these voters weren't supporting Reagan simply because they believed in trickle-down economics. They voted for him because he promised to break from the style of the previous administration. When Reagan was competing for the state's middle class workers, he was running against an unpopular Jimmy Carter, who voters blamed for the struggling economy.

Just as Michigan's voters rallied behind Ronald Reagan and answered him with a resounding "no!" when he asked in 1980 if they were "better off now than you were four years ago," 28 years later, a new group of struggling middle-income voters are supporting the candidate who promises change — Obama.

It made sense that the day after the Republican National Convention, McCain was in Sterling Heights wooing the swing voters of Macomb County.

But McCain's speech at the 10,000-person rally only briefly touched on the economy. He attacked Obama's plan, claiming: "I'll keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I'll open new markets for goods and services. My opponent will close them. I'll cut government spending, he'll increase it. My tax cuts will create jobs, his raises will eliminate them."

His nod to the Republican stock mantra of lower taxes wasn't enough to assuage the financial worries of blue-collar voters in Macomb County, who polls now to have flooded to Obama.

LOSING THE BLAME GAME

The state of Michigan has suffered a recession for longer than the rest of the country. The state's unemployment rate has been among the highest in the nation for years and is steadily increasing — more than 400,000 jobs have disappeared from the state over the past eight years.

And as the situation gets bleaker, Democrats and Republicans have only ramped up their finger pointing, leaving voters wondering whom to blame.

Democrats claim President Bush is responsible for the current crisis, accusing him of creating tax and trade policies that punish domestic industries.