U.S. vote campaign moves into final day Obama holds significant lead
The Los Angeles Times reports, “After almost two years of constant cross-country campaigning, the presidential election has come down to a flurry of appearances in several key states.” Barack Obama and Sarah Palin “are crisscrossing Ohio,” while “GOP standard-bearer John McCain returned to Pennsylvania, whose 21 electoral votes are seen by his strategists as up for grabs in Tuesday’s election.
The presidential candidates and their running mates are visiting more than a dozen states Monday as they campaign in the final day before the election.
Obama leads McCain by eight points nationally among likely voters, 51 to 43 percent, which is down three points from his 53-to-42 lead in the poll nearly two weeks ago.
To put Obama’s eight-point edge into perspective, the final NBC/WSJ survey before the 2004 presidential election had President Bush with a slim one-point lead over John Kerry, 48 to 47 percent.
Bush went on to win that election, 51 to 48 percent.
A fired-up McCain addressed a midnight rally near Miami, Florida.
“We’ve got one day left, one day left until we take America in a new direction. And we need your support on November 4, and I need you out there. With your help we will win,” he said.
Obama on Sunday warned against overconfidence in the final hours.
“Don’t believe for a second this election is over. Don’t think for a minute that power will concede without a fight. We have to work like our future depends on it in these last two days, because it does,” he said in Columbus, Ohio.
With just a day left until Election Day, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama holds a statistically significant advantage over Republican Sen. John McCain in the race for the White House, according to the final NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll before the election.
Obama said that with him, voters can choose “the promise of change over the power of the status quo.”
“So tomorrow, I ask you to write our nation’s next great chapter. I ask you to believe — not just in my ability to bring about change, but in yours. … If you give me your vote, we won’t just win this election — together, we will change this country and change the world,” he wrote.
Republican pundits, many of whom have been predicting disaster for weeks, said there was little hope Mr McCain could turn the situation round.
Forecasters were also anticipating a record high turn-out tomorrow based on the unprecedented surge in early voting in states such as Florida and Nevada.
Suggesting that “prayer” was Mr McCain’s last hope, Pat Buchanan, the former Republican candidate, told the BBC: “I think you’re going to have a civil war inside the conservative movement if this defeat is as large and sweeping as everyone seems to think this is, and if John McCain goes down to defeat with it.”
Obama, apparently more comfortable with his position here than McCain, plans no appearances in Pennsylvania today.
But both Bill and Hillary Clinton will campaign for Obama separately in western Pennsylvania today, and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden will rally at Marconi Plaza in South Philadelphia tonight.
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