WASHINGTON – With less than two weeks left before Election Day, Senator Kerry shifted the focus of his stump speech yesterday to domestic issues from national security. The Democratic presidential nominee emphasized stem-cell research, an issue that particularly resonates with women, and launched a “guns and God” campaign appeal that may bring him more men’s votes.

Wooing undecided voters in the Midwest, where the presidential campaigns have been focused all week in the gritty political equivalent of hand-to-hand warfare, Mr. Kerry donned a camouflage jacket and sported a 12-gauge shotgun for a dawn waterfowl hunt in Youngstown, Ohio.

He and three companions apparently shot four geese.

With an Associated Press poll and a Reuters/Zogby national tracking survey yesterday showing the presidential candidates statistically even in the projected national popular vote, small numbers of voters in Midwestern and other swing states could decide the election. The Republican and Democratic campaigns and their political allies are in a fast-moving competition that now includes a fierce fight over cultural issues involving religion and gun-owners’ rights, as well as stem-cell research and science.

Mr. Kerry and the Bush campaign dueled yesterday over stem-cell research.

The Democrat accused Mr. Bush of turning his back “on the spirit of exploration and discovery” by limiting federal funds for the research, which advocates argue could hold the key to reversing damage from spinal-cord injuries and diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

His remark came as the widow of the actor Christopher Reeve, Dana Reeve, joined Mr. Kerry to endorse his candidacy. Christopher Reeve was a prominent proponent of the embryonic-stem-cell research on which the president has placed limits.

The president charges his opponent is misleading voters on the issue, saying he announced the first federal financing of stem cell research in August 2001.

Polls have shown that women in urban areas favor broadening that research. The same demographic group tends to be more supportive of Mr. Kerry’s position on abortion than of Mr. Bush’s.

The macho start of Mr. Kerry’s day, his hunting excursion, drew a tart response from Vice President Cheney, who was also campaigning in the Buckeye State yesterday. He dubbed the Kerry shoot a campaign stunt, saying Mr. Kerry’s camouflage jacket was “an October disguise – an effort he’s making to hide the fact that he votes against gun owner rights at every turn.” The vice president, who also hunts, said: “The second amendment is more than just a photo opportunity.”

The gun issue hurt Vice President Gore among rural voters in the election four years ago. This time, Kerry advisers say they are determined to limit any damage from their candidate’s backing of legislation to prohibit assault-type weapons and to require background checks at gun shows.

Labor unions, in an orchestrated effort, circulated fliers yesterday among Midwest workers saying that Mr. Kerry isn’t against guns. “He likes his own gun too much,” one of the fliers said.

The National Rifle Association, which has endorsed Mr. Bush, is planning to spend $2 million on ads to counter Mr. Kerry’s contention that he is pro-gun.

The last time Mr. Kerry went hunting was in the early months of the campaign in Iowa, where polls said he was trailing the former Vermont governor Howard Dean in the Democratic caucuses, but he pulled off a comeback victory.

Kerry advisers told reporters before yesterday’s hunt that seeing the Massachusetts senator would help voters understand that the Democratic nominee is just one of the boys and helps them “get a better sense of John Kerry, the guy.” Earlier in the campaign, senior Democrats privately cautioned Mr. Kerry to avoid the more elitist pursuits of windsurfing and skiing.

Kerry campaign advisers say they believe that the Democratic nominee needs once again to combat the liberal elite image that the Bush campaign has tagged him with, and to soften his staid reputation in a bid to counter Mr. Bush’s folksiness. A top Democratic official told The New York Sun: “The personality issue is one we are working on.”

In the final days of the campaign, the Massachusetts senator plans to cross into Mr. Bush’s territory more and to talk about faith. He is to deliver a speech this weekend in Florida explaining his religious values, a theme he has begun to play up in recent campaign events in the Midwest.

Last weekend, at an Iowa town hall meeting, the Massachusetts senator talked about having his rosary with him while in firefights in Vietnam.

“The fact that Senator Kerry is a person of faith is something that might help voters who are undecided,” one campaign adviser, Mike McCurry, said.

Mr. Bush is also highlighting religious themes on the campaign trail. In Pennsylvania yesterday he emphasized his opposition to gay marriage and met with the archbishop of Philadelphia in an attempt to boost his share of the Catholic vote.

Four years ago Mr. Gore secured a slight majority of the Catholic vote, but Mr. Bush, a born-again Methodist, took the bulk of white Catholic votes. The president again leads among white Catholics this year, even though Mr. Kerry is the first Catholic to run for the presidency atop a major-party ticket since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

About a fourth of the U.S. electorate is Catholic, with many of those voters concentrated in the battleground states the campaigns are now scrapping over. White House press spokesman Scott McClellan dodged questions yesterday about whether Mr. Bush’s meeting with Philadelphia’s catholic prelate was designed to court Catholic voters.

Mr. McClellan also wouldn’t be drawn in when a reporter asked what the president thought about “some Catholic officials’ feeling that John Kerry should be denied communion and sacraments” because of the Democrat’s position in favor of access to abortion. “Look, those are questions you ought to direct to those religious leaders,” Mr. McClellan told reporters on board Air Force One.

On Wednesday, at Mason City, Iowa, Mr. Bush spoke on cultural themes, saying “We stand for marriage and family, which are the foundations of our society.” Mr. Bush has accused Mr. Kerry of being on the “left bank” of society and has frequently attacked his rival for opposing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

While the Kerry campaign was maneuvering yesterday for the final stretch of the election campaign, Mr. Bush’s advisers were completing plans for Governor Schwarzenegger of California to campaign for the president in Ohio the weekend before the election, as part of a GOP effort to energize the Republican base and leverage the governor’s star power to boost the president.

Mr. Bush won Ohio narrowly four years ago, but the state is now in play and Mr. Kerry is thought to hold an extremely thin lead in the Buckeye State. A Gallup poll released yesterday showed the Democrat with just a 1-point lead – within the margin of error.

Aside from the California governor’s trip, Bush campaign aides say there is no need to change the president’s game-plan for the final days of the campaign. “The president will just continue to make the case that his leadership is the leadership the country needs,” a campaign spokesman, Kevin Madden, told the Sun.

Mr. Madden dismissed suggestions that a “guns and God” message from Mr. Kerry would assist him in winning key states in the Midwest. “When voters look at John Kerry they will take into account his long Senate record and they will see that he is out of step with the mainstream on social issues, and no camouflage in the world can hide that,” he said.

Bush campaign aides said they remain confident the president will prevail in Midwest battleground states, and they point to a poll released yesterday by Gallup giving the Republican ticket a lead of six percentage points in Wisconsin. Other polls have suggested Mr. Kerry may have the edge in that state.

The Bush forces also dispute polls suggesting that Mr. Kerry is leading in Pennsylvania, where the president campaigned yesterday and accused his opponent of pushing plans for health care and liability reform that would trigger higher costs. “The Kerry plan would move America down the road toward federal control of health care,” Mr. Bush said.