LEVELAND, Oct. 5 - Determined to win the post-debate spin war on Tuesday night, President Bush's campaign called on its supporters to flood the news media with quick declarations that Vice President Dick Cheney had come out ahead.
Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush's campaign manager, delivered the request in an e-mail message to supporters early Tuesday morning.
"Immediately after the debate, visit online polls, chat rooms and discussion boards and make your voice heard," he said in the note, sent to the six million supporters on the campaign's e-mail list. "People's perceptions are shaped as much by their conversations around the water cooler as by the debates themselves."
The note - which is a mirror image of one sent out by the Democrats just before the first presidential debate last week - also exhorted supporters to follow up by writing letters to their local newspapers and by calling in to radio talk shows.
The instructions underscore the premium that both sides place on the post-debate scorekeeping by the news media, which the campaigns consider crucial to shaping perceptions and creating momentum in the final weeks of the race.
Such e-mail messages are just part of their arsenals for the post-debate spin wars: top aides and party surrogates are sent to cable news programs; local party leaders are sent to news studios to do the same in swing states and teams of researchers send dozens of messages to reporters covering the debates accusing the other candidate of flip-flops, misstatements or lies.
Vice-presidential debates are traditionally considered less influential than presidential ones. But both sides say this debate will carry more sway with voters, given the perception that the vice presidency has heightened importance in the post-Sept. 11 world. That was underscored by the lengths the White House went to shortly after the terrorist attacks to keep Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney separate at all times in case the vice president had to run the country.
So on Tuesday afternoon both campaigns had dozens of staff members, strategists and friends in Congress mingling around the news-media filing center at Case Western Reserve University to help set expectations.
Senator John Kerry's team is hoping his running mate, Senator John Edwards, can use the debate to build on the momentum that came from the Democratic presidential contender's well-reviewed performance at the first debate last Thursday.
That performance was credited with erasing much of the lead Mr. Bush had gained in polls after the Republican convention in New York, though Mr. Kerry still trails Mr. Bush in many polls on issues like national security and traits likability and conviction.
Mr. Bush's team, on the other hand, still smarting from the impression that the president lost the debate and seemed peevish and annoyed, is hoping Mr. Cheney will reverse the tide, and set up the president to do better at the next debate, which will be in a town-hall setting on Friday night in St. Louis.
Though Mr. Kerry's aides argue that the overwhelming perception that Mr. Kerry was the victor was based on reality, not campaign talking points, they said they went to great efforts to ensure that such a view prevailed in news coverage for several days after the debate.
That strategy included an entreaty by Mr. Kerry's campaign manager to visitors to his Web log, saying, "Right now we need you" to "contact the media and speak your mind." The gist of that message ricocheted through several liberal Web sites and some reporters were deluged with e-mail messages about why Mr. Kerry had won.
Mr. Bush's aides acknowledged that Mr. Mehlman's note on Tuesday was almost identical to one written by the Democratic Party chairman, Terry McAuliffe, last Thursday.
Noting that Mr. McAuliffe's note went unanswered on Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, Steve Schmidt, said, "We don't want it to happen in a vacuum."
Jano Cabrera, a spokesman for the Democrats, said, "They clearly are playing catch up.''
Mr. Bush's aides said Tuesday they would try to match the Democrats' operation this time, and privately conceded they were impressed by efforts on Thursday.
In his note to supporters, Mr. Mehlman wrote, "After last week's debate, the Kerry campaign spin machine managed to mask their candidate's flip-flops on the war in Iraq, imposition of a 'global test' for protecting America and repeated denigration of our troops and allies."
He added, "If we plan to win the election, we must fight back against their spin and make sure our friends and neighbors get the truth."
Mr. Mehlman's letter received far more attention on Tuesday than Mr. McAuliffe's had on Thursday, raising some concern among news executives that their online polls would be manipulated.
But Phil Griffin, an MSNBC vice president, said his anchors would be careful to note that online polls were not scientific and that partisans were trying to affect them.
