U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are crisscrossing America two days before the election with campaign stops in several key states where they are virtually tied.
After nearly two years of campaigning, the vast majority of voters have made up their minds, so candidates are focused on getting their supporters out to the polls on Tuesday. Romney started campaigning in the midwestern state of Iowa, where he urged Republicans to vote. “I need your vote, I need your work, I need your help,” he said.
The former Massachusetts governor dismissed Obama’s record as president as largely rhetoric.
“Talk is cheap. But a record is real and it’s earned with real effort… change – you can’t measure change in speeches,” he said.
At his first event Sunday, President Obama visited voters in New Hampshire and said that after four years as president, he still represents true change in Washington. He now travels south to Florida, before heading to Ohio and ending the day close to midnight in Colorado.
On Monday, the president returns to Wisconsin and Iowa and holds yet another event in Ohio before heading to his hometown of Chicago, where he will be on election night.
Meanwhile, Romney rallied with supporters in Iowa before heading to Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. His agenda for Monday includes a morning stop in Florida before trips back to Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire. He will spend election night in Boston, Massachusetts.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed a statistical dead heat between the two candidates, with Obama winning 48 per cent of the vote, and Romney 47 per cent.
Polls indicate the two candidates are virtually tied in the key states of Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia. The president holds a slight edge in Ohio and Virginia, while Romney is ahead in Colorado, and the two candidates are tied in Florida.
But the popular vote will not decide the outcome: States are apportioned a number of “electoral votes” based on their population, and the candidate who wins a majority of those votes – 270 of them – becomes president.
So both campaigns are focusing their energies on the handful of “swing states” where polls show a tight race.
Perhaps none is more important than Ohio, with 18 electoral votes. Saturday’s polls showed Obama leading there by anywhere from one to four points.
An Obama victory in Ohio would leave Romney with only a handful of paths to victory; he would have to win at least six of the remaining eight swing states in order to win the electoral vote.
Other polls were less encouraging for the president. Florida’s 29 electoral votes were totally up for grabs, with polls showing a dead heat and one survey showing a two-point lead for Romney.
In Virginia, a Reuters poll showed Obama up by one point, and a Pulse Opinion Research poll had him leading by three points.
The Romney campaign is making a last-minute push in Pennsylvania, which has generally been considered a safe Democratic state throughout this election cycle. Some polls there have showed the race is tightening slightly – though most still have Obama leading by at least three points.
There were already reports of problems with voting – two days before Election Day.
A judge in Florida ordered officials in Orange County to open up early voting for four more hours. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit by the Florida Democratic party, which complained that an early voting site in the county had been shuttered for several hours while authorities investigated a bomb scare.
The party has a separate lawsuit demanding extra early voting hours in three other counties, where voters reported having to wait in lengthy lines – some as long as six hours – to cast their ballots.
Florida has been the centre of a voting rights controversy over the last two years, with the state’s Republican-dominated legislature trying to limit early voting hours.
The early voting period is widely seen as helping Democrats, particularly in Florida, where African-American and Hispanic voters – reliable Democratic constituencies – often cast their ballots early.
Source:Thetimesofearth
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