(
)
President Obama and Mitt Romney used up what was left of their hoarse voices and jetted to their most crucial campaign targets yesterday in a last-ditch effort to inspire and cajole supporters in a race that is going right down to the wire when voters cast their ballots today.
After he cast his vote near his Boston-area home, Romney was visiting Cleveland and Pittsburgh on Tuesday, betting an eleventh-hour appeal to working-class voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania will help him defeat President Barack Obama.
His running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, is following a similar strategy, using his travel time after voting in his Wisconsin hometown to join Romney in Cleveland and then visit Richmond, Va. The campaign isn’t ruling out additional swing-state appearances as well. Tuesday night, he’ll await returns with Romney in Boston.
Romney told reporters he was feeling “very good” as he and his wife, Ann, appeared at a polling precinct near his Belmont, Mass., home just before 9 a.m.
Romney spent less than three minutes completing his ballot in the voting booth, which did not have a curtain. Asked who he voted for, he said with a smile, “I think you know.” It was the first time he had answered a direct question from the traveling press corps since late September.
Romney announced his plans in a two-pronged attack to try to tip Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania into his column after a series of tight polls there and pry away the Buckeye State, which Obama backers are calling his “firewall.”
Obama held rallies in battlegrounds Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa, and brought out his highest-wattage celebrity double-team — Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z — in a bid to drive up turnout.
The latest national polls showed the race in a virtual dead heat, with a small but decided Obama advantage in critical swing-state polling.
Obama brought back the “fired up, ready to go” refrain from his 2008 campaign rallies.
“We’ve come too far to turn back now . . . Now’s the time to keep pushing forward,” Obama told more than 15,000 boisterous supporters in a Columbus stadium that still had some empty blue seats.
“Ohio, I’m not ready to give up on the fight. I’ve got a whole lot of fight left in me and I hope you do, too,” he told the crowd.
“Here in America you can make it if you try. That’s why I’m asking for your vote,” Obama concluded in one of his last speeches campaigning for his own re-election.
Romney campaigned yesterday in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire.
“If you’re tired of being tired . . . then I ask you to vote for real change,” Romney told a rally in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington, DC. Ann Romney, joining her husband, asked the crowd: “Are we going to be neighbors soon?”
Romney kept up the hits on the incumbent, on a day when neither candidate showed a significant edge in the national popular vote.
“Let me tell you why he fell so short of what he promised. It’s because he cared more about a liberal agenda than he did about repairing the economy,” said Romney. “I won’t waste any time complaining about my predecessor. And I won’t spend my time trying to pass partisan legislation rather than working to help America get back to work.”
In a rally at the airport in Lynchburg, Va., Romney said: “Almost every measure he took hurt the economy. It hurt fellow Americans. It’s not just Republicans he hasn’t listened to, it’s independent voices.”
Romney also hammered home his appeal to independent voters, telling them he has a record of working across the aisle as governor of heavily Democratic Massachusetts. He said Obama promised to be “post-partisan” but instead was the “most partisan.”
“The partisan divide between the parties — he’s made it wider,” Romney said.
Nationally, Romney led the final Gallup poll, 50-49, while Obama was up 50-47 in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll and 48-46 in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The swing-state polls continued to show a close race. Obama led in three out of four Ohio polls, but never topped 50 percent. He led 50-49 in a University of Cincinnati poll, 49-44 in SurveyUSA, and 49-48 in Gravis Marketing, while he and Romney were tied at 49 in the last Rasmussen poll.
Maps of the Electoral College give Obama more paths to reaching the needed 270 electoral votes, no matter who gets the most nationally, and Obama could survive by hanging on to Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa — the three states he visited yesterday.
An Obama win in Ohio would make an overall Romney victory considerably harder. There were long lines in early voting sites in Columbus yesterday, with most voters waiting more than an hour to cast their ballots.
Romney got better news in Florida, where he led 52-47 in an Insider Advantage poll for the Times Union of Jacksonville. But he was tied with Obama at 49 in the latest Gravis Marketing poll.
In Pennsylvania, Obama led 49-46 in the latest Gravis Marketing poll. Many of the final state polls are within the margin of error, keeping political pros and voters on edge.
At his own rally at the Columbus airport, Romney brought out Olympic champion skater Scott Hamilton and home-grown golf legend Jack Nicklaus.
Romney is scheduled to wrap up his day in Boston, where his national headquarters is based, for an election-night celebration at the Boston Convention Center.