Though Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have moved their clash out of Pennsylvania, there is still a battle brewing in the Keystone State.

Republicans are busy plotting strategies to recapture the thousands of voters who switched their party registration so they could vote in the Democratic primary.

Area Republican officials plan to convene next week to decide what their message should be, according to Lancaster County GOP chairman Dave Dumeyer.

GOP overtures likely will paint Democrats as intent on raising taxes to pay for health care, subprime mortgage bailouts and alternative energy development, according to Dumeyer.

"Now is not the time to raise taxes," he said. "Most economists would tell you in times of a recession is not the time to raise taxes."

The state GOP plans an all-out pursuit because the party watched as 164,026 Pennsylvania voters changed their party registration to Democrat in 2008, according to figures from the Pennsylvania Department of State. Democrats also welcomed 152,775 previously unregistered voters to their party.

By comparison, Republicans signed up 40,195 first-time voters and added just 14,887 voters who switched parties.

Locally, the GOP lost 500 voters before the primary election, according to the Sunday News.

Michael Barley, spokesman for the state GOP, said efforts already have begun to bring back some of the disenchanted Republicans.

For one thing, as the Clinton and Obama camps continue the rancorous tone that characterized the Pennsylvania primary, a moderate candidate like Republican Sen. John McCain will appeal to those tired of Democratic bickering, Barley said.

"(McCain's) going to take a large chunk of the more moderate Democrats and the moderate Republicans and the independent vote," Barley said.

Republicans also plan to start a grass-roots effort to reach those who left the GOP.

"Our plan is to contact them via mail, via phone calls, via door-to-door," Barley said.

It probably won't work, said Abe Amoros, the spokesman for the state Democratic Committee.

According to Amoros, the wave of new Democrats has to do with three things: President Bush's approval ratings sinking to historic lows, an unpopular war in Iraq and a struggling economy.

"Pocketbook issues are still number one, and (Republicans) try to throw up smokescreens like gay marriage and immigration," Amoros said. "Those things, out of a scale of 1 to 10 — 1 being the most important — those things poll like 9 or 10."

Amoros said "precedent" is on the side of Democrats, pointing to how in 2002, only 10 percent of those who switched parties to vote in the Democratic gubernatorial race between Ed Rendell and Bob Casey Jr. returned to the GOP.

Talk by the GOP of luring former Republicans back from the Democratic side was "just trying to paint a rosy picture of what is a very bad situation for Republicans in Pennsylvania."

Barley, though, expressed confidence in the attractiveness of McCain's platform, especially once it's compared to the eventual Democratic nominee's.

"If you look at what the Democrats want to do to address these situations, it's higher taxes and a retreat from the war on terror," he said. "Americans are going to think it's a bad strategy, and on the economy, they're completely off."

And there's the potential schism in the Democratic Party if the nomination process alienates either the Clinton backers or Obama supporters. According to the Los Angeles Times, exit polls Tuesday showed about eight in 10 Obama voters saying they believed Clinton was untrustworthy, while 90 percent of Clinton voters thought the same of Obama.

ABC News reported that a quarter of Clinton supporters plan to vote for McCain if she's not the Democratic nominee, while 16 percent of Obama's voters said the same if Clinton is the nominee.

Amoros said those numbers aren't "reality-based."

"Emotions are high," he said. "When you have disagreements, you are going to have ruffled feathers. Once the fall campaign really goes into high gear, we're going to pick up even more people, and you are going to have a lot of Republicans who are going to vote for the Democratic candidate."

Steve Peterson, director of Penn State-Harrisburg's School of Public Affairs, said history favors the Democrats in 2008.

"Historically, the party of the president when the public disapproval is high hurts that party's candidate in the presidential election," Peterson said. "McCain has some real challenges with that."

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com