Clinton and Obama Make Rounds in Crucial Eastern States

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spent the final, tension-filled hours before tomorrow's Super Tuesday contest squeezing out votes in the east coast battlefield states where polls place them almost neck and neck.

Leaving their spouses to fight it out in the west, Clinton campaigned in the New England states of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Obama too held events in these states, but also visited New Jersey, long regarded as Clinton's backyard - she is a senator in neighboring New York - but where he is fast closing the poll gap.

The key battleground states are those that are delegate-rich and almost all too close to call: California, Missouri, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.

There was a sense of exhilaration inside Obama's camp today over the momentum he has built up over the last week.

At a rally in New Jersey, Obama said that after a year "criss-crossing the country and engaging in a conversation with the American people, my bet has paid off. They are ready to write a new chapter in the American story."

David Axelrod, Obama's campaign director, dropped his normal caution and spoke as if the contest had been won. "The Clinton campaign has given us a very hard battle. They have been good sparring partners," he said.

Obama has succeeded in pulling out over the last few weeks a series of surprise endorsements and today he was introduced at the New Jersey rally by Robert de Niro, a New York icon.

The actor said he had never made a political speech before but that Obama had inspired him. "One person has given me hope, has made me believe that we can make a change."

One of Obama's advisers, who preferred to remain anonymous, said Obama was banking on a repeat tomorrow of the South Carolina primary last month - won by Obama - where 43% of those who voted finally made up their minds in only the last 24 hours.

"I do not think Super Tuesday will deliver a knock-out blow for either of them," the adviser said.

Going into Super Tuesday, Clinton has 261 delegates to the party convention in the summer that, theoretically, will choose the Democratic nominee for November's general election and Obama has 190. At stake in tomorrow's 22-state contest are 1,681 delegates.

While taking a majority of the states or a higher proportion of voters will allow one of the two to claim a moral victory, more important for each camp will be how many delegates they can accumulate.

Stephen Hess, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution, said: "I think she will get a bigger bounce. He is closing fast but not fast enough for his purposes. I am assuming she is going to pull ahead."

But he anticipated Obama doing better in the post-Super Tuesday contests. "If that is the case, it could be a very long process," he said. While Americans are more sceptical about pollsters after their dismal performance in the early contests, they are consistently showing an extraordinary narrowing in Clinton's earlier double-digit lead.

The New York Times today put Clinton and Obama jointly on 41% nationwide. Another poll for CNN today put Obama on 49% to Clinton's 46%.

Obama, who took in $32m in donations last month, has spent $11m so far on the Super Tuesday states and six more states due to vote in the coming weeks.

He paid $250,000 for an ad during last night's Super Bowl, the only politician to stump up for the most expensive advertising slots of the year because the football final is watched by almost half the population.

Clinton spent the final hours trying to capitalize on her appeal among women, hosting an interactive coast-to-coast discussion from New York that was scheduled to go out across the country via the internet.

She was also scheduled to do the widely-watched prime-time show, 'Late Show With David Letterman'.