Busy last week ahead in tight race

Heading toward the final week of a long campaign, US President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are locked in a neck-and-neck contest, with Obama scrapping like a challenger and Romney campaigning like a president.

National and swing state polls are inconclusive, and numerous intangibles are likely to sway the outcome: Who will turn out? How do people feel in their gut about the economy? And is there a real “October surprise” that will give one candidate a last-minute shove across the finish line? One potential factor: The government will report the latest unemployment numbers next Friday, the last report before Election Day four days later.

The final push is likely to mean an unprecedented blur of messages to Americans in about a dozen contested states — on TV, in the mailbox, in Twitter accounts and email inboxes — while Americans in the rest of the country will watch almost as bystanders, their states leaning solidly toward one candidate or the other.

Romney heads into this last stretch trying to motivate voters with lofty generalities and an appeal to patriotic instincts.

Think big, the former Massachusetts governor implores audiences. The economy’s weak, but I’m a turnaround artist and I’ll fix it. He ends speeches by quoting lines from “America the Beautiful.”

Big challenges

“Our campaign is about big things, because we happen to believe that America faces big challenges,” he told an Ames, Iowa, audience on Friday. “This is a year with a big choice, and the American people want to see big changes. And together we can bring real change to this country.”The President talks big, too, but he also spends lots of time tearing into Romney, sometimes in unusually blunt language for the normally cautious Obama.

Accused of running a negative campaign with no agenda of his own, Obama’s campaign this week put together a 20-page “New Economic Patriotism” booklet. The campaign is running ads and telling crowds that Romney would return American society to the ugly old days.

“You can choose to turn back the clock 50 years for women and immigrants and gays, or in this election, you can stand up for that basic principle enshrined in our founding documents that all of us are created equal,” Obama said Thursday in Cleveland.

Neither candidate has been able to open up a sizable lead, either nationally or in swing states, for months. Even the three debates ended up a virtual tie. While Romney won the first, Obama bounced back in the second and the third. As a result, the candidates wound up in a “virtual draw,” Gallup found.

In state after state, the race comes down to the same variables: who voters think can best manage the economy, and who will show up at the polls.

The economy grew at a sluggish two percent pace in the last quarter, and unemployment remains historically high. Largely as a result, Obama’s approval rating flirts with the magic 50 percent mark. That struggle signals trouble, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

People have known Obama for four years and made their judgement, while they’re just getting to know Romney. Romney also maintains a Republican base firmly on his side. “This year Republicans would vote for a badly sculpted piece of driftwood over Obama,” Sabato said. The best clue to the race’s trajectory in these last days is the candidates’ travel. According to RealClearPolitics, a non-partisan website, the contest is now in a virtual tie in 11 states.

Electoral votes

An Associated Press tally shows Obama ahead in states with 237 electoral votes; Romney leads in states with 191. If that holds, Obama must win in enough swing states to accumulate 33 more electoral votes. Romney needs 79 more.

The two biggest swing-state prizes are Ohio, with 18 electoral votes, and Florida, with 29. Polls show the candidates running even in Florida, and a CNN/ORC International survey released Friday showed Obama up four percentage points in Ohio.

The states to watch, though, could be those where a candidate seemed assured of victory but finds the polls suddenly tightening. An Obama or Romney visit to Michigan, Arizona or Pennsylvania would suggest those states are now in play.

Michigan and Pennsylvania have long been seen as safe Obama states. But RealClearPolitics has both in the “tossup” category, as polls show Obama’s lead is between four and five percentage points.

“The polls here tightened after the first debate and stayed there,” said Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics , a non-partisan publication. “Michigan is still in bad shape.”

Of course, the candidates’ plans could be upended by a storm barrelling toward some battleground states.

A confluence of high wind, heavy rain, extreme tides and maybe snow could make it harder for Americans to participate in early voting, an important part of both campaigns’ efforts, particularly for Obama.

Rally cancelled

Romney’s campaign already has cancelled a rally scheduled for Sunday in coastal Virginia Beach, Va. Two other events in the state are still on for Sunday, though Romney’s campaign said it was watching the storm’s trajectory closely. Parts of Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina are in the path of the storm.

About five percent of Americans with solid plans to vote have yet to pick their presidential candidate, according to a new AP-GfK poll. When you add in those who lean only tentatively toward their choice or won’t declare a favourite, about 16 percent of likely voters look ripe for persuasion. That’s about the same as a month ago.

In a super-tight race, undecided voters have taken on almost mythic stature. Their questions at the town hall-style debate are parsed. Campaign techies wade through data to find them. The President dialled up 9,000 of them for an Air Force One conference call as he flew to Los Angeles last week.

But the undecided also endure Twitter sniping and late-night TV ribbing. They’re derided as uninformed nincompoops who don’t merit the power they wield. As David Letterman put it: “You’re idiots! Make up your mind!” Do these wafflers, ruminators and procrastinators deserve coddling — or scorn? Are they just misunderstood?

Two-thirds of persuadable voters have an established party preference, the AP-GfK poll shows. They’re roughly divided between those who call themselves Democrats or lean that way and those who are Republicans or lean to that side.

Dallas Morning News, ABC