IS IT OBAMA OR MCCAIN?

Obama, Romney predict victory on eve of election

 

US President Barack Obama (Left) greets Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both confidently predicted victory on Monday, as they rallied supporters in the dying hours of a bitter White House race, which the US president leads by a whisker.

The foes, drained by fatigue, charged through the swing states that will dictate their fates, taking final shots hours before polls open in an election that will decide whether Obama wins a second White House term.

"We need to have new leadership and new vision for the country," said Romney, the Republican nominee, at his penultimate campaign event in an aircraft hangar in Columbus in the potentially pivotal swing state of Ohio.

"President Obama promised change, but he couldn't deliver it," Romney told thousands of cheering supporters, who chanted "One More Day, One More Day" under a huge banner that read "Victory in Ohio."

Earlier, Romney -- despite trailing in polls of the battleground states that will decide the election -- forecast he would win, and urged supporters in Virginia to help get out the vote on Tuesday.

"We thank you and ask you to stay with it all the way until we win tomorrow night," Romney said, sparking wild cheers.

The Republican candidate was holding his final rally in New Hampshire, though scheduled get out the vote stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania on election day.

Obama, barnstorming with rock legend Bruce Springsteen and rapper Jay-Z, delivered a similar message in the liberal college town of Madison, Wisconsin, pleading with supporters to stick with him in a final push to the finish.

"If you're willing to work with me again, and knock on some doors with me, make some phone calls for me, turn out for me, we'll win Wisconsin. We'll win this election. We'll finish what we started," he said.

Obama is hoping to defy historic precedents which suggest that presidents who preside over shaky economies and high unemployment fail to win re-election.

Later, the president held his last rally of the campaign in Ohio, and repudiated Romney's claim to be a candidate of change.

"You know that I know what real change looks like because you've seen me fight for it," Obama said.

"I've got the scars to prove it. I've got the gray hair to prove it."

Obama was later to wind up his re-election bid with his last-ever campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, the city where his unlikely quest for the presidency began in early 2007.

Then, he was headed home to Chicago for election day.

Election eve polls cemented the impression that Obama has the slightest of leads after a campaign that has cost billions of dollars, but cannot take victory, and the historical validation of re-election, for granted.

The final national polls showed an effective tie, with either Romney or Obama favored by a single point in most surveys, reflecting the polarized politics of a deeply divided nation.

Obama however led by three points in national polls conducted by Pew Research and by the Washington Post and ABC News, suggesting that if either candidate could boast of 11th-hour momentum, it was the 44th US president.