By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : As US presidential hopefuls made their final push ahead of Super Tuesday’s coast to coast battle, Democrat Barack Obama was fast catching up in polls with rival frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Latest opinion polls indicated that the man who aspires to be America’s first black president had narrowed the lead of the lady who seeks to be the first woman to occupy the Oval Office in such key states as California, Arizona and New Jersey.
Nationally, the latest USA Today/Gallup poll showed a statistical dead heat, with Clinton leading 45 percent to Obama’s 44 percent. But aides for both candidates have said they believe the race will continue beyond Tuesday’s battle in 22 states.
On the Republican side, which only weeks ago seemed wide open, Vietnam war veteran John McCain sought to ride his recent victories and rising poll numbers to the nomination while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney hoped to get enough delegates to keep his campaign alive.
In the countdown to the biggest primary day in American electoral history, candidates and their supporters raced across the country to rally crowds in last-minute appeals as airwaves and websites were filled with speculation.
Speaking at a rally in New Jersey, with former president John F. Kennedy’s brother Senator Edward Kennedy and daughter Caroline Kennedy, and actor Robert DeNiro at his side, Obama said he looked forward to a general election campaign against McCain.
“This is a choice between the past and the future,” he said, “and if I’m running against McCain I want to go forward, not backward.”
Speaking at the Yale Child Study Centre, where she worked as a young law student, Clinton nearly lost her voice, showing the strain of non-stop campaigning. But husband Bill Clinton stumped all over California for her.
Countering a statement by Obama that voting for Hillary Clinton would return the country to the 1990s when he was president, Clinton said: “Compared to this decade, that one looked pretty good.
“But that’s not true. She doesn’t want to go back to the ’90s. She wants to get you back on your feet so we can go forward.”
On the Republican side, McCain, ahead in the polls but distrusted by conservatives for his maverick record on immigration, taxes and campaign finance reform, defended his credentials even as he touted his electability.
“As president of the United States, I will preserve my proud conservative Republican credentials, but I will reach across the aisle and work together for the good of this country,” he said while campaigning in Boston.
A hoarse-voiced Mitt Romney told supporters that he is the lone candidate to speak for conservatives. “Do you want a nominee who voted against the Bush tax cuts?” and “Do you want to have a nominee who represents the conservative principles and keeps us inside the house that Ronald Reagan built?” he asked.
In third place in the polls and lagging behind in media attention, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee also stumped in Tennessee, wrapping himself in the mantle of the “underdog”.
But McCain, who did well in the Northeast in his 2000 race against George W. Bush, hopes Super Tuesday will resolve his race against Romney Huckabee.
“I hope to bring it to a close tomorrow,” McCain told reporters.
With the Super Tuesday battle both parties would have elected 55 percent of the delegates who pick up the two major parties’ nominees for the Nov 4 presidential poll.
At stake for Democrats are 2,062 or more than half of the party’s 4,050 delegates who will elect its nominee in August. The winner needs at least 2,026 of them. For the Republicans 1,048 of 2,380 delegates or about 44 percent of them are up for grabs. The winner needs 1,191.