WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney embarked Saturday on the final stretch of their long, grinding presidential campaign, making their closing arguments in the handful of battleground states that will decide the outcome of a tight race that is going down to the wire. National opinion polls showed a race for the popular vote so close that only a statistically insignificant point or two separated the two rivals. Soundings in the nine battleground states tightened after Obama's poor performance in the first presidential debate, on Oct. 3, and stayed that way. Yet Republicans quietly acknowledged that Romney had so far been unable to achieve the breakthroughs needed in the key swing states such as Ohio, where polls show the Republican trailing by several percentage points. No Republican has 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. Nearly 26 million Americans already have cast ballots in early voting in 34 states and Washington, D.C. On the last day of early voting in Florida, voters at some sites in Miami-Dade and Broward counties were waiting up to four hours to cast ballots. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson asked his state's Republican governor to extend early voting at least through Sunday, citing “an untold number of voters being turned away or becoming too discouraged to vote.” Obama tended to presidential business before politics Saturday 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 percent effort” by all those involved. “There's nothing more important than us getting this right,” Obama said, keenly aware that a spot-on government response to the storm also was important to his political prospects. Then he began his own three-state campaign day in Ohio, the biggest battleground of Campaign 2012. After holding mostly small and mid-size rallies for much of the campaign, Obama's team is planning 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 Obama had in the closing days of the 2008 race, when his rallies drew more than 50,000. Romney began Saturday in New Hampshire by faulting 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 released a TV ad carrying the same message. On Saturday, Obama's first stop was in Mentor, Ohio, then he was campaigning in Milwaukee and Dubuque, Iowa, and ending the day in Bristow, Virginia. On Sunday, he was taking his campaign to New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado and, yes, Ohio. Looking elsewhere for electoral votes, Romney and his allies sought to expand the political map into Pennsylvania, hoping to end a streak of five presidential contests where the Democratic candidate prevailed in the state. Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 10 percentage points in 2008; the latest polls in the state give him a 4 to 5-point margin. Romney will campaign in the Philadelphia suburbs on Sunday. Obama aides scoff at the Romney incursion, but they are carefully adding television spending in the state and are sending Clinton to campaign there Monday. Under the US system, the nationwide popular vote does not determine the winner. Romney and Obama are actually competing to win at least 270 electoral votes in state-by-state contests. Those electoral votes are apportioned to states based on a mix of population and representation in Congress. It takes 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win the presidency. The final frenzy of campaigning comes in the wake of Superstorm Sandy that has dominated much of the news coverage for the past several days as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut recover from the brunt of its force. — AP
