Obama, Romney neck-and-neck in US campaign

US President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney remain neck-and-neck as the presidential campaign enters its final couple of days.

Voters go to the polls on Tuesday in what is turning out to be one of the closest races for the White House in years.

Mr Obama and Mr Romney have embarked on the last stretch of a grinding presidential campaign.

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

Polls in the nine battleground states tightened after Mr Obama's poor performance in the first presidential debate, on 3 October, and the race has stayed close since then.

In the US, the winner is not determined by 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.

Mr Romney and Mr 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.

Republicans quietly acknowledged that Romney had so far been unable to achieve the breakthroughs needed in such key swing states as Ohio, where polls show the Republican trailing by several percentage points.

No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio.

That leaves Romney with the tougher path to reach the required 270 electoral votes.

He must win more of the nine most-contested states that are not reliably Republican or Democratic: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire.

About 27 million Americans already have cast ballots in early voting in 34 states and Washington DC.

Mr Obama tended to presidential business before leaving Washington yesterday as he led a briefing at the government's disaster relief agency on the federal response to Superstorm Sandy. He said the recovery effort still has a long way to go but pledged a "120% effort" by all those involved.

"There's nothing more important than us getting this right," Mr Obama said, keenly aware that a spot-on government response to the storm also was important to his political prospects. Then he began a three-state campaign day.

After holding mostly small and mid-size rallies for much of the campaign, Mr Obama's planned a series of larger events this weekend aimed at drawing big crowds in battleground states. Still, the campaign isn't expecting to draw the massive audiences Mr Obama had in the closing days of the 2008 race, when his rallies drew more than 50,000.

Mr Obama's closing weekend also included two joint events with former President Bill Clinton: a rally Saturday night in Virginia and an event Sunday in New Hampshire.

In Virginia, Mr Clinton, his voice hoarse from a flurry of campaign events, said he had given "my voice in the service of my president." The former president vouched for Mr Obama's economic agenda, saying he had done a good job with a bad hand.

Mr Obama sought at the rally to draw a connection between the flush economy Mr Clinton presided over and his own policies for a second term, including increasing taxes on upper income earners.

Mr Romney began Saturday with a morning rally on the New Hampshire seacoast.

He then headed to Iowa and made two stops in Colorado later in the day.

He shifted an original plan to campaign in Nevada on Sunday in favor of a schedule likely to bring him back to Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

His running mate Rep Paul Ryan hit Ohio and Pennsylvania before heading to two more swing states.

Mr Obama spent Saturday in Ohio, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Dubuque, Iowa, and ended the day in Bristow, Virginia.

Today, he is taking his campaign to New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado and Ohio. Vice President Joe Biden spent Saturday in Colorado

In New Hampshire, Mr Romney faulted Mr Obama for telling supporters a day earlier that voting would be their "best revenge"

"Vote for `revenge?"' the Republican candidate asked, oozing incredulity. "Let me tell you what I'd like to tell you: Vote for love of country. It is time we lead America to a better place."

The Republican nominee sounded the same message in Iowa and released a TV ad carrying the same message.

Mr Obama campaign spokesman Jennifer Psaki said the president's revenge comment was nothing more than a reminder that if voters think Romney's policies are "a bad deal for the middle class, then you have power, you can go to the voting booth and cast your ballot."

Mr Obama, campaigning in Ohio, countered with a final reminder that Tuesday's election is "not just a choice between two candidates or two parties, it's a choice between two different visions for America."

The president offered himself as the candidate voters can trust, renewing his criticism of Romney for what he said were misleading ads suggesting that automakers were shifting US jobs to China.

"You want to know that your president means what he says and says what he means," Mr Obama told a 4,000-person crowd in northeast Ohio. "And after four years as president, you know me."

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