APPLETON - The closest United States presidential race for two generations enters the home straight today with the two main candidates storming neck-and-neck into the last frantic week of campaigning.
After the best part of two years on the trail, Vice-President Al Gore and the Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, are chasing each other coast to coast and border to border - in an effort to capture the last wavering voters in a contest that could be decided by less than 100,000 votes nationwide.
Both campaigns are sharpening their rhetoric, scaring and seducing by turns. The airwaves of marginal states are saturated with political commercials.
If the mood of the rival camps determined the outcome, Bush could be declared the victor already. Exuberant at his Midwestern rallies, he spent Sunday recording interviews and advertisements before a whistle-stop California tour.
A hatchet-faced Gore, meanwhile, is traipsing the battlegrounds of Michigan and here, Wisconsin, before himself flying West in an unwished-for mission to halt the trend to Bush.
While latest opinion polls give the edge to Bush nationally, the margin is just a few points - mostly within the polls' margin of error.
With every hour of every day now so valuable, routes and schedules are constantly adjusted: a Gore campaign boat trip was abandoned as too costly in time, and replaced by more rallies on the ground.
This marathon 2000 contest is rare not just in its nail-biting closeness, but in the fact that the last, best efforts of the campaigns have served, if anything, to make it still closer as election day approaches.
Three weeks ago, just 11 states were regarded as serious "toss-ups" which could shift either way; now that number is 18 and counting. As many as 158 - of the 538 total of electoral college votes that determine the presidency - are still in play.
It is not just the traditional "swing" states of Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania that are in contention, but a whole slew of second, and even third-tier states in further-flung parts of the country. This has forced the candidates to stop off in places they might never have expected to set foot in - certainly at this late stage - in quest of those few, decisive votes.
Gore's situation is the less enviable. Larger states, such as Pennsylvania and Illinois, and even California, which he hoped had been sewn up months ago, have suddenly tightened, requiring emergency attention. He has also been forced to spend a precious 24 hours campaigning in his home state of Tennessee - where he lags behind Bush, according to a new poll, by as much as 11 points. Traditionally Democratic states such as Washington and Oregon in the northwest, Minnesota in the Midwest and even West Virginia are still in contention.
The first three of these highlight Gore's other difficulty: the unexpectedly strong showing by Bush in these traditionally Democratic states has brought the so-called Nader factor into play. The veteran consumer campaigner, Ralph Nader, is running as the Green Party's presidential candidate and commanding a steady 5 per cent in most polls.
On the West Coast and in the northern tier of states, environmental concerns are swelling his ranks further, to the point where Gore is now reluctantly admitting that Nader poses an indirect threat.
And the tighter the Gore-Bush race, the bigger a factor Nader becomes. Present estimates say that Nader could cost Gore between four and eight states.
So worried were some on the political left last week that a number of Nader's own erstwhile supporters tried to persuade him to give up his campaign, at least in those states at risk. But Nader argues that there is little to choose between the two establishment candidates and he flatly rejected the appeals.
Complicating the overall picture still further is that by no means all marginal states are showing a trend to Bush. Gore remains ahead in Florida, a state whose loss to Bush would be as embarrassing as the loss of Tennessee for Gore, as his younger brother, Jeb Bush, is Governor and had faithfully undertaken to deliver the state for the Republicans. Without Florida, common wisdom has it, no Republican can win the White House.
This year, though, much common wisdom is being confounded. In an extraordinary comment on the sharpness of the battle for votes, the end of last week found both Gore and Bush in West Virginia, which boasts only five electoral college votes.
This year's election is undoubtedly rare in the depth of uncertainty among voters, as reflected in the volatility of the opinion polls, but it may be unique in terms of quite how much is at stake. Not only are there two presidential candidates whose policies derive from very different philosophies, but almost every elected component of the American system of government is also in play.
There are exceptionally close Senate races in as many as a dozen states, including New York, where Hillary Clinton is trying to keep Daniel Pat Moynihan's seat for the Democrats. In the House as many as 30 seats could change hands. With the Republican majority in both houses so small (54-46 in the Senate; 222-210 in the House), just a few races could determine control of both houses of Congress.
The complexion of Congress will determine to a large extent what the next President can achieve. But Bill Clinton's successor could also have in his gift as many as four places on the Supreme Court and the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve.
Bush country or Gore country, the next four years could make the US a very different place.
- INDEPENDENT
Last-minute frenzy narrows gap in US presidential race
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