WASHINGTON - REPUBLICAN presidential nominee John McCain ramped up his attacks on Democratic rival Barack Obama in neighbouring Virginia yesterday, describing his rival as stuck in the 'far left lane' of American politics.
Mr McCain kicked off the final weekend of campaigning - before Americans head to the polls in historic elections on Tuesday - by sticking to his strategy of painting the Democrat as an old-school tax-and-spend liberal.
Mr Obama, meanwhile, took Halloween night off from campaigning to take his daughter trick-or-treating before hitting the road again to conduct a blitz on states normally won by Republicans, but which polls show him to be leading.
His strategists predicted a crowd of 100,000 would turn up for a free acoustic concert by Bruce Springsteen in downtown Cleveland in the battleground state of Ohio today at which both Mr Obama and his wife, Michelle, are scheduled to appear.
Ohio and Virginia are among a handful of battleground states Mr McCain needs to win if he is to score an upset over Mr Obama, who is bidding to become the first black United States president and who is leading in a slew of national and local polls.
Whether the Karl Rove-style '72-hour' voter turnout tactics that helped propel President George W. Bush to victory in 2004 work this time will not be known until Tuesday, of course.
After days of consecutive polling leads, Republican John McCain did make a small gain against Mr Obama yesterday, 48 per cent to 47 per cent, according to a Zogby poll.
In the three-day rolling poll of likely voters nationwide, Mr Obama still continues to lead by five points, 49 per cent to 44 per cent, the latest Reuters/C-Span/ Zogby survey showed.
'He is beginning to cut into Mr Obama's lead among independents, is now leading among blue-collar voters, and has strengthened his lead among investors and among men,' said Mr John Zogby.
'Obama's lead among women declined, and it looks like it is occurring because McCain is solidifying the support of conservative women.'
In the RCP poll of polls, Mr Obama's lead is at 6 points, while other polls grant him between 5 and 11 points.
The final days are crucial as the two campaigns rev up their turnout drives and the early voters continue to flock to polling stations.
An unprecedented 16 million have already cast their ballots in early voting allowed in 30 states. Some 59 per cent of these voters have backed him while 40 per cent supported his rival John McCain, according to a poll by the Washington Post-ABC News.
More crucially, Mr Obama seems to be having a run in the critical swing states.
In all-important Florida, where Mr McCain must win if he is to prevail on Nov 4, 30 per cent of the total number of 11.2 million potential voters have already voted.
Mr Obama is believed to have captured 60 per cent of these votes in the traditionally Republican state that contributed to President Bush's narrow victories in 2000 and 2004.
Likewise, early-voting Democrats are outnumbering the Republicans in Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. Mr Bush carried these states in 2004 and Mr McCain needs most of them by his side.
The overall pro-Democratic trend is a total reversal of the early-voting success enjoyed by Mr Bush, who carried 60 per cent and 62 per cent of the early voters in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
Mr Bush gave credit for his wins to Mr Rove, then his political guru. Mr Rove's '72-Hour Task Force' consisted in using grassroots efforts to win a closely contested race in its last three days.
A master at boiling down a complicated message into a few forceful points, Mr Rove tapped the small towns and suburban voters. He emphasised education, traditional values and lower taxes as part of the carefully crafted 'compassionate conservative' appeal to draw out unexpected support for Mr Bush.
Mr McCain has taken a page out of Mr Rove's playbook - his chief strategist Steve Schmidt is Mr Rove's protege - but lacks the funds and enthusiastic support of the Republican base that saw Mr Bush safely home.
By contrast, Mr Obama combines the savvy acquired in his days as a community organiser and the lessons imbibed in Chicago's competitive, pragmatic politics. He has at his command 1.5 million volunteers in 770 offices across the land and a formidable war chest.
Wary of Democratic predecessors who have managed to 'snatch defeat from the jaws of victory', he has been drilling the early-vote message in massive rallies over the past few weeks.
'Races are lost on thousands of votes,' he reminds them and asks them to vote now in case they were sick, injured or out of gas on election day.
Mr John Fortier of Washington-based think-tank American Enterprise Institute says: 'Obama could win this election; many factors point to the fact that he is in a better position than (John) Kerry was in 2004.'
