US Election: All Eyes on Battleground States As Mccain Hits the Road

John McCain, after his moment in the spotlight last night, was planning to head off to Michigan, a key battleground state, today as the general election formally begins after nearly two years of campaigning and two party conventions.

The end of those conventions marks the official start of an election that has in effect been under way since at least January last year when Hillary Clinton declared she was to seek the Democratic nomination.

Hundreds of millions have been spent since then on campaigning and hundreds of millions more will follow with McCain and Obama working from morning to night, mainly in the battleground states.

The decisive moments that could determine the decision of swing voters could be the three presidential debates between the two men to be held in Mississippi, Tennessee and New York in the coming weeks.

Michigan, one of the states worst hit by the US's ailing economy, is to be among the first stops by McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, after his grand finale speech last night. They are also to visit Wisconsin and Colorado, two other states in play. Colorado is normally a state the Republicans can count on but in this volatile election year Obama is hoping he can steal it from them. Michigan contains the swing voters, often referred to as the Reagan Democrats, that McCain has to bring into his camp to take the White House.

Obama is also scheduled to visit battleground states today and over the weekend. Reflecting the importance of Michigan, the Democrats yesterday released a television ad to be broadcast in the state, featuring a petrol pump, with the price showing as $4.65 (£2.62) - more than double what it was a year ago - below the name McCain-Bush.

The Republican convention, which closed yesterday after four days of business - though most of the first day was lost because of Hurricane Gustav - laid out the themes on which McCain is to fight the election: opposition to Obama's plans for higher taxes, McCain's background as a Vietnam war hero, expansion of oil drilling in US waters in response to high petrol prices, and emphasis on his extensive foreign policy experience. The Democrats, after the personal pounding Obama received in the past two days, expect more of the same in the coming weeks, with the focus on trying to pull him apart.

McCain pushed to top up his election coffers before he accepted the nomination yesterday. He is barred under campaign-finance rules from fundraising once he accepts the nomination because he has opted to take $85m in public funding. But the campaign used a surge of excitement among the Republican grassroots to raise $47m in August - the highest monthly haul since McCain began his run.

The last-minute infusion of cash, plus a Republican strategy of collecting large pools of donations for allied groups, means that McCain could defy expectations and narrow the fundraising gap with Obama in the final stretch of the elections. That would represent a setback for Obama who had earlier broken fundraising records in his campaign, and who forfeited public financing thinking he would gain a big financial advantage over McCain.

The Democrats tried to pull away attention from McCain's big moment last night, scheduling an interview for Obama on Fox television. The Obama camp also released a new spoiler ad, which attacks the notion that McCain, with Sarah Palin by his side, represents a force for change. Instead, it argued that McCain was out of touch with the American everyman and closely tied to the policies of George Bush. "McCain still doesn't get it," the ad said. "While this may be his running mate, America knows this is John McCain's agenda."