Obama seeks to protect polls lead in swing states

The battle for votes in the eastern states of America continues. Democrat Barack Obama was in Virginia, which has voted Republican for the last 44 years.

Polls there put Obama four points ahead of his rival, but the race favourite warned his supporters that their greatest enemy is complacency. He told them: “We can’t afford to slow down and sit back and we can’t let up for one minute, one day or one second of the next five days. Not now. Not when there is so much at stake.”

Obama then flew to Missouri, another traditionally Republican state that polls suggest might swing to the Democrats.

John McCain was joined in Ohio by local boy Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber. McCain can’t afford to lose the state next Tuesday, and with Joe by his side, he believes he won’t.

He told a rally in the town of Mentor: “I’ve been in a lot of campaigns and I’ve seen momentum and I can feel momentum in this room tonight and we’re gonna win, we’re gonna win Ohio. I can feel it, I can feel it.”

But most opinion polls don’t feel it and say Obama’s half-hour ad on Wednesday has given him the momentum both nationally and, more importantly, in swing states.

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