Vicki Toppses remembers the gasoline and Iran hostage crises of the 1970s, so she wants a president strong on economic and foreign policy. She’s also from California, which shapes how her president should view immigration.

Spirituality is also important to Toppses, 38, of Lewiston. In this, she wants her president to reflect her values. Lastly, she’s a registered Republican, so her president will certainly come from the Grand Old Party.

Toppses knows what she wants in her president.

Unfortunately, she still cannot decide which Republican candidate to support.

“I’m impressed by how confused everybody is,” laughs Toppses, who works at Bates College. She partially blames the media, for focusing too much on polls, instead of policy. “I personally believe the Founding Fathers didn’t put before us a popularity contest,” she says.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, it’s not just those in the GOP who are finding themselves undecided. Democratic and Republican voters alike are now divided between the Clinton-Obama quinella and the Romney-McCain-Huckabee-Paul superfecta.

Most Maine Republicans caucus from Feb. 1-3; Democrats gather Feb. 10. Though some candidates have dropped out, the picture for the caucus could stay, in Matthew Mower’s words, “clear as mud.”

“I suspect people will have their first, second or third choice,” says Mower, the Lewiston Republican city chairman, about the GOP caucus. “A lot of candidates are strong in different ways.”

Mower is one of the undecided. At various points during the campaign, he’s been drawn to John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani and Fred Thompson, and has sat shoulder-to-shoulder with other Republicans stuck deliberating among the same slate.

He’ll likely walk into the Republican caucus without a clear preference – choosing a candidate, he says, will depend on weighing two interests:

“I want a candidate who reflects what I stand for,” says Mower, 29. “But I also want a candidate that will win.”

In Avon, Tom Bulger is taking a different tack toward Mower’s issue: He has a candidate he thinks will win – Barack Obama – but he also has a candidate he supported financially – John Edwards, until he dropped out of the race Wednesday.

“If money talked, I was undecided,” he quips. “I think Obama would be a real turn of the page, not business as usual. If people … had given Edwards a chance, he would have made a great president. He just didn’t have the magic. But I still believe in Edwards, big time, and think he’d make a great vice presidential candidate.”

Thirty-four-year-old Brian Pfohl also supported Edwards. As a Kentucky native, he’s historically voted in primaries, and the Democratic caucus in Lewiston, where he lives, would be his first. While he’s familiarizing himself with the new process, he’ll also be trying to firm up his presidential choice.

“I’m still ambivalent,” he says about Feb. 10. He leaned toward Edwards, for the former senator’s strong stance on universal health care, but “did not regard Edwards as the perfect saving grace of the country.”

Pfohl thinks a Democrat with weak “electability” could be exploited by the GOP challenger. So if it comes down to Hillary Clinton or Obama, he says, the difference could be which “pulls the most weight” for the Democrats.

Maybe.

“I don’t know what will happen in the next week-and-a-half to strengthen my opinions on either one,” he adds.

Observers see the struggles of Toppses, Mower, Bulger and Pfohl as par for the New England electoral course.

“I think in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the role of the uncommitted has a good deal to do with how we tend to our lives,” says Will Fessenden, chairman of the Androscoggin County Democrats. “For many folks, the D or R beside the name does not influence their vote. It is about the candidate’s views and opinions.”

This year, however, this independent influence is refracted through the prism of many strong candidates. There’s too many pulls, which is Toppses’ problem in determining her presidential preference.

On spiritual issues, she leans toward Mike Huckabee. McCain is strong on the war and foreign policy, she adds, but also has “liberal tendencies.” She appreciated what Giuliani did on 9/11, but criticized him as “not a conservative.”

She promises to let her conscience be her guide, either way. “I’ll vote for the best candidate,” Toppses says. “I don’t care if they’re electable.”

And then there are some voters who are content to wait it out.

“The biggest reason for me being undecided is just that there is no candidate that grabs me,” says Dan Ollen, 19, of Topsham, a sophomore English major at Elon University in North Carolina.

A registered Republican, Ollen is missing the Maine caucus because of school. Which, given the struggles of prospective caucus-goers, puts him in perhaps the best possible situation – given he doesn’t object to having no voice in the primary.

Since he won’t vote in the caucus, he says, “I have until November to make up my mind.”