TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Obama Presses In Republican-Leaning States

ADVERTISEMENT

The Associated Press

Published: November 4, 2008

Barack Obama radiated confidence Monday as he and his presidential rival reached for the finish line of a two-year marathon with a burst of campaigning across battlegrounds from the Atlantic Coast to Arizona.

"We are one day away from change in America," said Obama, a Democrat seeking to become the first black president - a dream not nearly as distant on election eve as it once was.

Obama led in virtually all the pre-election polls in a race where economic concerns dominated and the war in Iraq was pushed - however temporarily - into the background.

Early voting, with more than 29 million ballots cast in 30 states, suggested an advantage for Obama as well. Official statistics showed Democrats who have already voted outnumbered Republicans in North Carolina, Colorado, Florida and Iowa, all of which went for President Bush in 2004.

By his near-nonstop attention to states that voted Republican in 2004, Obama acknowledged the Democrats' advantage in the presidential race.

Obama began his day in Florida, a traditionally Republican state with 27 electoral votes where polls make it close. Obama drew about 9,000 at a rally in Jacksonville.

Democratic volunteers in Maryland, a state safe for Obama, called voters in next-door Virginia. The Democratic presidential candidate's visit to Virginia during the day was his 11th since he clinched the nomination.

Several hundred miles away in Ohio, the state that sealed Bush's second term in 2004, voters waited as long as three hours in line to cast ballots in Columbus, part of heavily contested Franklin County. Poll workers handed out bottles of water to sustain them.

Obama flew from Florida to North Carolina to Virginia, all states that went Republican in 2004, before heading home to Chicago on election eve.

Joe Biden campaigned in Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania. "We are on the cusp of a new brand of leadership," he assured supporters.

Whatever the fate of the Democratic presidential ticket, Biden was heavily favored to win a new Senate term from Delaware on Tuesday.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT