NEWINGTON: Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama hop-scotched across the country yesterday in a final push to squeeze out victory from the handful of states that will decide Tuesday’s presidential election.
“Three more days! Three more days!” chanted a crowd of roughly 2,000 at an early-morning rally in New Hampshire, where Romney urged supporters to try to sway neighbours who have Obama signs in their yards to change their minds.
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Romney argued that he would do a better job than Obama at overcoming partisan divisions in Washington. “After four years of disappointments, fixing America’s problems requires a new direction,” he wrote.
Obama, who has spent much of the week overseeing efforts to help northeastern coastal states recover from devastating storm Sandy, received a briefing at the federal government’s disaster-relief headquarters in Washington before returning to the campaign trail.
“There’s nothing more important than getting this right,” Obama said of the disaster relief before flying to Ohio for a campaign rally.
The storm has afforded the Democrat an opportunity to rise above the fray of campaigning.
But it has also raised the stakes for him to show his administration can respond quickly and effectively in a crisis, as residents of New York and New Jersey vent frustration at power outages and gasoline shortages.
“He’s focused on it every moment he’s not speaking on the stage,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One.
The race for the White House remains effectively tied at a national level. A Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll released on Saturday showed Obama leading Romney by a statistically meaningless margin of one percentage point, 47 percent to 46 percent.
Neither candidate has held a clear lead since early October. But in the nine or so states that remain truly competitive, Obama holds a slight edge.
The narrow scope of the race has been evident for months but it was shown vividly on Saturday, when Obama and Romney were scheduled to hold rallies six hours apart in the Iowa river city of Dubuque.
Romney was also scheduled to campaign in Colorado before returning to Des Moines. Obama planned to visit Wisconsin and Virginia. Romney has tried to expand the battlefield over the past week to states that had been considered beyond his reach.
His vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan was headed to Pennsylvania later in the day, and Romney himself is due to speak there on Sunday.
Obama officials say Romney is campaigning there out of desperation because he has been unable to establish a clear lead in states like Ohio that are crucial to his prospects.
A variety of state polls show Obama holds a narrow advantage in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Wisconsin, which would allow him to eke out a narrow victory on Tuesday, barring any surprises elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the Obama campaign is dispatching Vice President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, to Pennsylvania and former President Bill Clinton to Minnesota.
Romney is within striking distance in four other battleground states - Florida, Virginia, Colorado and New Hampshire, and he appears to hold a clear advantage in North Carolina.
Reuters
