NEWPORT NEWS, Nov 1, (AFP) -Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain enter the final weekend of their epic US election battle Saturday, scrambling across several states in a last dash for votes.
Obama, aiming to become the first African-American to be elected president next Tuesday, was bidding to lock down western battlegrounds in Nevada and Colorado before returning to the bellwether state of Missouri.
Victory in the west would go a large way towards securing an election triumph for Obama, even if he loses one of the major toss-up states out east such as Florida, a pivotal state in recent US elections.
Midwestern Missouri meanwhile has an impressive track record of backing the White House winner in every election since 1904, with one exception in 1956.
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| U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) runs on stage at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, October 31 |
Obama was to be joined by his wife Michelle at the events in Pueblo, Colorado and Springfield, Missouri.
The would-be first couple were to head on to must-win Ohio Sunday for three events including a rally with rocker Bruce Springsteen in Cleveland. Obama's running mate Joseph Biden was stumping in Indiana and Ohio on Saturday.
McCain, meanwhile, was preparing to hit the trail in Virginia and Pennsylvania before heading to New York to make a cameo appearance in television comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live.
Despite gloomy polls that suggest Obama is heading for victory, the McCain campaign has defiantly said they remain in the hunt.
At a rally in Columbus, Ohio on Friday, a fired-up McCain got a welcome lift from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
McCain told supporters: “I know a winning campaign when I see one. We're a couple of points back. Arnold said it best. The Mac is back. We need a new direction and we have to fight for it.” However Obama's massive campaign spending advantage has forced McCain onto the defense. McCain and running mate Sarah Palin will each race through seven states on Monday, many of them normally reliably Republican.
McCain has struggled to disassociate his campaign from the Republican administration of outgoing President George W. Bush.
In an interview on Friday, Obama said the other pressing priorities if he wins would be achieving energy independence and enacting universal health care for Americans reeling from the economic crisis.
“And none of this can be accomplished if we continue to see a potential meltdown in the banking system or the financial system,” he told CNN in Iowa, where he beat Hillary Clinton in the year's first Democratic nominating clash.
“So that's priority number one, making sure that the plumbing works in our capitalist system,” Obama said.
He refused to detail his potential choice of Treasury secretary -- but noted that his economic advisers include ex-Treasury secretary Larry Summers, former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker and billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
On Friday Obama said he had admired McCain in 2000, when the Republican had decried “low road” politics after going down to a vicious smear campaign in his contest against Bush for the Republican nomination that year.
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| U.S. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) (R) is joined by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio October 31, 2008. |
“But the high road didn't lead him to the White House then, so this time, he decided to take a different route,” the Democrat said. “But Iowa, at this moment, in this election, we have the chance to do more than just beat back this kind of politics -- we have the chance to end it once and for all,” he said in Des Moines.
“We have the chance to prove that the one thing more powerful than the politics of anything-goes -- the one thing the cynics don't count on -- is the will of the American people.
“That's how we'll steer ourselves out of this crisis -- with a new politics for a new time. That's how we'll build the future we know is possible -- as one people, as one nation.”
Obama has 5-point lead over McCain
WASHINGTON, Nov 1 (Reuters) -
Barack Obama's lead over rival John McCain dipped slightly to 5 points with three days left in the race for the White House, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Saturday.
Obama leads McCain by 49 percent to 44 percent among likely voters in the three-day national tracking poll, down from a 7-point advantage on Friday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Obama has led McCain in every national opinion poll since late September, and McCain also trails in many of the key battleground states including Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. |
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