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Roundup: Gore, Bush in Tight Race for White House
As the clock ticks down to Tuesday's election, U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and his Republican rival George W. Bush dashed cross battlegrounds which will decide their close tussle for the White House.
Vice President Gore opened his day Sunday with big rallies in Philadelphia and Detroit, and then headed for Wisconsin and Iowa. He is also expected to go back to Pennsylvania and Florida before the election.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor George W. Bush prepared for a day-long blitz of Florida Sunday after campaigning in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey Saturday.
Observers here said the White House race is still too close to call even two days before the election. While Bush is leading slightly in most national polls, Gore appears competitive in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.
A new joint survey conducted by CNN, USA Today and Gallup showed that Bush led Gore 47 percent to 43 percent. A new Washington Post poll published here Sunday gave Bush a lead of two percentage points, 48 percent against 46 percent. A Reuters/MSNBC poll Saturday also showed that Bush was ahead of Gore by 46 percent to 44 percent.
With more than a dozen states still up for grabs, no candidate is sure enough so far to secure 270 electoral votes, an electoral college majority needed to win the presidency.
Assuming Gore holds the Democratic base states, particularly New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois, and Bush takes the reliable Republican states as well as Ohio and Missouri where he leads, the states that are most likely to decide the election are Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, with a combined 66 electoral votes.
Bush is trying his best to keep the critical state of Florida with 25 electoral votes from falling into the hands of Gore. Polls in Florida, where George W. Bush's brother Jeb Bush is governor, generally give Gore a small lead, but Bush has been making up ground in recent days.
This year's presidential election is considered to be the closest race since 1960, when Democratic John F. Kennedy defeated Republican Richard M. Nixon in an extremely close contest that was not decided until early Wednesday after Election Day.
Some political analysts are talking about the possibility that Gore might lose the popular vote but still win an electoral college majority that places him in the White House. In 1888, Democratic President Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the electoral college decisively to Republican Benjamin Harrison.
Democratic Gore is hoping to become the fifth vice president directly elected to the presidency in the U.S. history after John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren and George Bush since the election is held against the backdrop of peace and prosperity, with a record-high budget surplus, poverty at a 21-year low and unemployment at a 30-year low.
However, Republicans are optimistic that they will take back the White House after an eight-year hiatus. Party insiders believe that Americans are tired of President Bill Clinton, have doubts about Gore and are ready for change.
Bush argued that voters want "a fresh start" after eight years of controversy under President Clinton, while Gore said the administration has built a strong economy and voters should keep the prosperity going.
While the two sides are fighting for a choice between Democratic continuity or a "new kind of leadership," their major policy differences centered around how to spend the estimated 4.6 trillion dollars of budget surplus in the coming 10 years.
Besides selecting a new president, American voters will also decide the course of Congress and statehouses across the country Tuesday.
This will be the most expensive election in history with candidates, parties and special interests spending more than 2 billion dollars in pursuit of the White House and Congress, surpassing totals in the 1996 elections, but the turnout is expected to be low this year.
Observers here said that with the contest so close, the election could be decided by voter turnout: which candidate gets the most supporters to the polling booth. A new survey found that an estimated 100 million Americans were expected to stay away from the polls Tuesday.
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