Obama, Romney make last push in tight race

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama waves to sup­port­ers dur­ing a cam­paign event at Capi­tol Square, Sun­day, in Con­cord, N.H. (AP Photo/Pablo Mar­tinez Monsivais)

STEVEN R. HURST

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can rival Mitt Rom­ney attacked one another Sun­day in fren­zied cam­paign­ing two days before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, clos­ing out what has been one of the most neg­a­tive races for the White House in recent mem­ory. Polling showed the can­di­dates in a vir­tual tie for the pop­u­lar vote nation­wide, with Obama hold­ing a slight lead in the all-important bat­tle­ground states that will decide the outcome.

Beyond the nine so-called swing states, Rom­ney was mak­ing a last-minute play for tra­di­tion­ally Demo­c­ra­tic Penn­syl­va­nia with a mas­sive adver­tis­ing foray and a cam­paign appear­ance with run­ning mate Paul Ryan in the state late Sun­day, his first stop there this fall.

The Repub­li­can ticket cast the late push into Penn­syl­va­nia as a sign that Rom­ney had momen­tum and a chance to pull away states that Obama’s cam­paign assumed it would win hand­ily. Obama senior adviser David Plouffe told ABC tele­vi­sion Sun­day that Romney’s move was “a des­per­ate ploy at the end of a cam­paign,” given the Democ­rats’ million-voter reg­is­tra­tion advan­tage in Pennsylvania.

Nev­er­the­less, Obama was respond­ing by dis­patch­ing deeply pop­u­lar for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton to the state for a four-city sweep through Penn­syl­va­nia on Monday.

In heav­ily Demo­c­ra­tic Cleve­land, Ohio, on Sun­day after­noon, Rom­ney slammed Obama for what he termed the president’s fail­ure to end the par­ti­san grid­lock that has brought Wash­ing­ton to a vir­tual leg­isla­tive impasse and for break­ing his promises to vastly improve the econ­omy while cut­ting the national debt.

“Talk is cheap,” Rom­ney said in the Lake Erie indus­trial city. “But let’s look at the record.” He went on to lash the pres­i­dent for what Repub­li­cans claim are a series of bro­ken Obama promises on both the econ­omy and chang­ing the polit­i­cal cli­mate in the country.

Regard­less, national opin­ion polls showed the race for the pop­u­lar vote in Tuesday’s elec­tion so close that only a sta­tis­ti­cally insignif­i­cant point or two sep­a­rated the two rivals.

The final national NBC/Wall Street Jour­nal Poll showed Obama get­ting the sup­port of 48 per­cent of likely vot­ers, while Rom­ney receives 47 per­cent. The poll had a mar­gin of error of 2.55 per­cent­age points.

A new national poll from the Pew Research Cen­ter found Obama with a three-point edge over Rom­ney, 48 per­cent to 45 per­cent among likely vot­ers, an improved show­ing indi­cat­ing that the pres­i­dent may have ben­e­fited from his han­dling of the response to Super­storm Sandy. That poll had a mar­gin of error of 2.2 per­cent­age points.

The major­ity of polls in the bat­tle­ground states — espe­cially in the Mid­west­ern states of Iowa, Wis­con­sin and Ohio — showed Obama with a slight advan­tage, giv­ing him an eas­ier path to the 270 elec­toral votes needed for vic­tory. No Repub­li­can has won the White House with­out car­ry­ing Ohio.

Under the U.S. sys­tem, the win­ner is not deter­mined by the nation­wide pop­u­lar vote but in state-by-state con­tests, mak­ing “bat­tle­ground” states that are nei­ther con­sis­tently Repub­li­can nor Demo­c­ra­tic extremely impor­tant in such a tight race. Rom­ney and Obama are actu­ally com­pet­ing to win at least 270 elec­toral votes. The elec­toral votes are appor­tioned to states based on a mix of pop­u­la­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Congress.

That raises the pos­si­bil­ity of a replay of the 2000 elec­tion when Repub­li­can George W. Bush won the pres­i­dency with an elec­toral vote major­ity, while Demo­c­rat Al Gore had a nar­row lead in the nation­wide pop­u­lar vote.

If the elec­tion were held now, an Asso­ci­ated Press analy­sis found that Obama would be all but assured of 249 elec­toral votes, by car­ry­ing 19 states that are solidly Demo­c­ra­tic or lean­ing his way — Iowa, Nevada and Penn­syl­va­nia among them — and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia. Rom­ney would lay claim to 206, from prob­a­ble vic­to­ries in 23 states that are strong Repub­li­can turf or tilt toward the Repub­li­cans, includ­ing North Carolina.

Up for grabs are 83 elec­toral votes spread across Col­orado, Florida, Ohio, New Hamp­shire, Vir­ginia and Wis­con­sin. Of those, Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats alike say Obama seems in slightly bet­ter shape than Rom­ney in Ohio and Wis­con­sin, while Rom­ney appears to be per­form­ing slightly bet­ter than Obama or has pulled even in Florida and Virginia.

Rom­ney, who described him­self as “severely con­ser­v­a­tive” dur­ing the Repub­li­can pri­mary cam­paign, has shifted sharply in recent weeks to appeal to the polit­i­cal cen­ter and high­lights what he says was his bipar­ti­san record as gov­er­nor of Democratic-leaning Massachusetts.

Mak­ing his clos­ing case to vot­ers at his first stop Sun­day in Des Moines, Iowa, Rom­ney pledged, if elected, to work with Democ­rats to restore the Amer­i­can dream and bring the econ­omy roar­ing back to life.

“We’re Amer­i­cans. We can do any­thing,” Rom­ney said. “The only thing that stands between us and some of the best years we can imag­ine is a lack of lead­er­ship — and that’s why we have elections.”

After his stops Sun­day in Iowa and Ohio, Rom­ney moves on to Penn­syl­va­nia and Virginia .

In the final days of his final cam­paign, Obama has been implor­ing crowds at his ral­lies — and the wider elec­torate — to let him fin­ish what he started. The nation has been bruised by reces­sion and war, he con­tends, but remains resilient and is com­ing back.

Obama, too, said he is will­ing to work across party lines to break Washington’s grid­lock, but assured some 14,000 sup­port­ers who gath­ered to hear him and for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton in Con­cord, New Hamp­shire, that he would not com­pro­mise key Demo­c­ra­tic pri­or­i­ties such as health care and col­lege finan­cial aid.

“I know I look a lit­tle bit older, but I’ve got a lot of fight left in me,” Obama said. “We have come too far to turn back now. We have come too far to let our hearts grow faint. It’s time to keep push­ing forward.”

Obama had a full sched­ule Sun­day, with cam­paign stops that also take him to Florida, Ohio and Colorado.

The econ­omy has been the dom­i­nant issue of the cam­paign despite detours into for­eign pol­icy and social issues. At week’s end, the final jobs report before Tuesday’s elec­tion gave one last eco­nomic snap­shot, show­ing the U.S. adding a solid 171,000 jobs and more than a half-million Amer­i­cans join­ing the work­force. But the job­less rate of 7.9 per­cent was still higher than when Obama took office.

More than 27 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have already voted in 34 states and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Obama holds an appar­ent lead over Rom­ney in sev­eral key states such as Iowa and Nevada. But Obama’s advan­tage isn’t as big as the one he had over John McCain four years ago, giv­ing Rom­ney hope that he could make up that gap in Tuesday’s voting.

Posted by AP News on Nov 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.