US Elections: Obama Upbeat As Campaign Enters Final Hours

Barack Obama entered the final hours of the longest and most expensive election campaign in American history in an upbeat mood today, voicing Democratic confidence when he said the party has a "righteous wind at our back".

Obama's campaign team predicted he would break the traditional pattern of US politics to take long-established Republican states. The RealClearPolitics average put Obama on 50% to rival John McCain's 43%, a lead that, if replicated in Tuesday's election, would produce a landslide.

The McCain camp came out in force too today to argue that the Republican was still in contention, and that it would be a mistake to write him off. "What we are in for is a slam bang finish," McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, predicted.

Nearly two years after it began, the closing 72 hours of the epic battle between Obama and McCain saw both camps making an exhaustive effort to win over the diminishing camp of undecided voters, and get the faithful to the polls.

In a last blitz of battleground states, Obama returned to the promise of a new kind of politics that has defined his campaign.

"If you give me your vote on Tuesday, we won't just win this election ? together, we will change this country and change the world," Obama said in the Democrats' national radio address.

After defeat in the 2000 and 2004 elections, the Democrats, buoyed by polls numbers, were increasingly prepared to abandon the nervous hesitation about voicing in public their hopes that they were finally on the verge of victory. The Democratic senator Chuck Schumer told CBS television: "Wednesday morning Dems are going to be very happy."

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, was also optimistic, telling CBS he was cheered by the surge in early voting which favoured Democrats. "The edge is pretty substantial in our favour," Axelrod said.

In Colorado, a once-Republican state where Obama now leads, some 46% of the electorate have turned out for early voting. North Carolina, an even more strongly Republican state, is also showing heavy early voting in favour of the Democrat.

"We feel good," Axelrod said. "It is not just the polls. It is the early voting ... These figures are are coming in strong for us, reversing the traditional patterns."

The Obama campaign manager, David Plouffe, said it had deployed a record number of volunteers over the weekend to knock on doors trying to get supporters to the polls on Tuesday.

The Republicans, while admitting the odds were against stacked against them, insisted McCain will close the gap in the final hours. "John's a closer. He always has been," Fred Thompson, the Law and Order star and former rival for the White House, told NBC television. ''He often is given up for dead - literally and politically. People have been wrong about him before."

He added: "I think the election has yet to be decided."

However, last minute polls provided little evidence to support Davis's claim that the race was tightening. McCain has been behind Obama in all of the more than 250 polls conducted since late September.

Karl Rove, who masterminded Bush's campaign in 2000 and 2004, was less optimistic than the McCain team's public pronouncements. McCain has "a very steep hill to climb", Rove told Fox.

McCain has so far kept his promise - in spite of pressure from some of his advisers and his running mate Sarah Palin - not to make race an issue by using tapes of Obama's former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright.

The Republican party today paid for a series of robocalls - taped phone messages - in key states quoting Hillary Clinton from when she stood against Obama for the Democratic nomination, saying he was inexperienced and the White House was no place for "on the job training".

McCain's team, outspent in advertising by Obama almost every day since the campaign formally began early in September, said in an email to supporters today it would match him on the eve of election. "In the final days of the campaign, our television presence will be bigger and broader than the Obama campaign's presence." The McCain camp said it would outspend Obama by $10m in the coming hours.

McCain devoted most of his final hours trying to shore up support in traditionally Republicans states. While he held an event today in Pennsylvania - his main Democratic target on Tuesday - the Republican was also forced to return to states that had been in the Republican fold in 2004.

His itinerary before polling day called for trips to Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and even Tennessee, with a last swing through the Rocky mountain states of Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico before returning to his home in Arizona late tonight/Monday.

Obama, meanwhile, held a rally on Saturday in Springfield, Missouri, one of the mostly staunchly conservative corners of a state won comfortably by George Bush in 2004.

He was campaigning in Ohio today, with appearances in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus. After stops tomorrow in Florida and North Carolina, he plans to end his campaign with a huge rally in northern Virginia, a traditionally Republican state that is one of his top targets on Tuesday.