Barack Obama and John McCain battled Saturday into the final weekend of the marathon campaign for the White House, jetting between a handful of states that could yield a Democratic landslide or deliver Republicans one of the greatest comebacks ever.
"Don't believe for a second that this election is over," Obama told a crowd outside Las Vegas.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, November 04, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 25 words Type of Material: Correction
Electoral map: A map in Sunday's Section A, showing how states might vote, indicated New Jersey had one electoral vote. It has 15 electoral votes.
McCain agreed. "Volunteer! Knock on doors!" he exhorted supporters in rural Pennsylvania. "With your help we can win."
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers walked precincts and worked phone banks across the country, collaring undecided voters and urging the committed to mail their ballots or, if possible, vote early.
The TV airwaves hummed in more than a dozen hard-fought states with a last burst of advertising, appealing to the hearts and guts of Americans besieged by hard economic times. On the radio, the two rivals used a national broadcast to present their platforms, and to deliver a few more jabs.
Each was reaching for history. Obama, 47, and a freshman senator from Illinois, was vying to become the nation's first black president. McCain, 72, and a 26-year veteran of Congress, was bidding for an upset to rival Harry S. Truman's resurrection in 1948.
Opinion surveys, nationally and across the most important battleground states, gave Obama the advantage, with multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Campaigning in Nevada, however, the Democrat warned against complacency.
"We've got to work like our future depends on it in these last three days, because it does," Obama told a crowd of about 15,000 gathered at a high school football field in Henderson. Behind him, the march of tract homes into the desert stood as testament to the faded boom years.
McCain concentrated on two states vital to his chances, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Republican seized on a line Obama delivered Friday in Des Moines and misinterpreted it to suggest that Obama needed a victory in the Iowa caucuses to vindicate his faith in Americans.
"My country's never had to prove anything to me," McCain said disdainfully at an airport rally in Perkasie, Pa. "I've always had faith in it."
The Obama campaign noted the line was one Obama has delivered often -- including before he won Iowa -- to praise the thoughtfulness voters bring to the political process and their willingness to look past labels to solve problems.
