Barack Obama does the business on jobs
Just 10 days before the presidential election, Mr Obama yesterday put a gloss on the US's recovery from a deep recession and ridiculed Republican challenger Mitt Romney's promise of "big change" if elected on November 6.
"All he's offering is a big rerun of the same policies that created so much hardship for so many Americans," Mr Obama said in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Mr Romney retains a five-point national lead over the Democrat President among likely voters, 51 to 46 per cent, according to the latest Gallup poll. Among overall registered voters, the poll shows the two candidates tied on 48 per cent.
The Obama campaign is putting its money on scoring an election victory - despite possibly not gaining a majority of votes at a national level - by holding battleground states. The election is determined by which candidate achieves 270 state-based electoral college votes.
Mr Obama has slight leads in the key states Ohio (18 votes), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Iowa (6), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), Nevada (6) and New Hampshire (4). He is tied with Mr Romney in Colorado (9) and trailing slightly in Florida (29).
An Associated Press tally gives Mr Obama 237 electoral college votes before battleground states in contention are counted, compared with 191 for Mr Romney, suggesting the Republican has the bigger challenge.
Campaigning in Florida, which he is confident of winning, Mr Romney yesterday accused the President of lacking vision with an empty second-term agenda, and said his opponent was "shrinking from the magnitude of the times".
The difficulty for Mr Obama in selling his message is that recovery from the worst recession in 80 years remains slow despite improvement in the 7.8 per cent jobless rate, the housing market and economic growth.
A further complication has emerged as one of the most violent storms in decades headed for the US east coast, nicknamed "Frankenstorm", upsets their schedules.
Both candidates yesterday started reworking travel plans for the final campaign week, cancelling events in key states as hurricane Sandy, since downgraded to a tropical storm, threatened to wreak havoc when combined with two other bad weather systems.
While Mr Obama has an executive role in a national emergency that could help boost his standing among voters, Mr Romney will be keen to adopt the right tone as the alternative president.
In purely political terms, the storm could prove more harmful to Mr Obama's prospects: he is relying heavily on states that allow early voting where support is running his way, but voters could stay away from polling booths if the bad weather persists.
As new figures showed the US economy grew at a rate of 2 per cent over the previous quarter but appeared to be slowing, Mr Romney stepped up his assault on Mr Obama's economic management in a speech at the weekend.
"Despite all that he inherited, President Obama did not repair our economy, he did not save Medicare and Social Security, he did not tame spending and borrowing, he did not reach across the aisle to bring us together," the Republican contender said.
Mr Obama hit back in New Hampshire.
"After losing nine million jobs under the theories that Governor Romney is now promoting, our businesses under the ideas we've been working with have added more than five million new jobs in the last 2 1/2 years," the President said.
"Manufacturing: highest job growth in manufacturing since the 1990s. The unemployment rate is falling. Manufacturing is coming back to our shores. Our assembly lines are humming again.
"Housing prices are starting to pick up. House starts are all on the move. We've got a lot of work to do. But New Hampshire, the country, has come too far for us to turn back now."
The New York Times endorsed Mr Obama for a second term, saying he had achieved the most sweeping health reform in decades, prevented another Depression and ended the Iraq war.
The newspaper's editorial said: "For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically endorse President Barack Obama for a second term, and express hope that his victory will be accompanied by a new congress willing to work for policies that Americans need."
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