Obama, Romney focus on swing states in late campaigning

 President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney engaged in frantic get-out-the-vote efforts and made final pleas to voters on Monday in a sprint through battleground states that will determine who wins their agonisingly close White House race.

Both candidates sought to generate strong turnout from supporters and to sway independent voters to their side in the last hours of a race that polls showed was deadlocked nationally. Obama had a slight lead in the eight or nine battleground states that will decide the race on Tuesday’s Election Day.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos national poll of likely voters, a daily tracking poll, gave Obama a slight edge, with 48 per cent support compared to Romney’s 46 per cent. The difference was within the 3.4 percentage point credibility interval, which allows for statistical variation in Internet-based polls.

Obama was up 4 percentage points in must-win Ohio, 50 per cent to 46 per cent, and held slimmer leads in Virginia and Colorado. Romney led in Florida by 1 percentage point, the poll found.

The president, with a final day itinerary that included stops in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa, urged voters to stick with him and trust that his economic policies are working. Traveling with him was rocker Bruce Springsteen.

“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,” Obama told supporters in Columbus, Ohio.