HARRISONBURG, Virginia (AFP) — White House rivals Barack Obama and John McCain entered the final seven days of their historic campaign Tuesday, sparring in rain-lashed Pennsylvania as the Democrat exhorted his fired-up supporters to nail down victory.
While McCain canceled one event in the rust-belt state owing to the foul weather, Obama paid tribute to more than 9,000 hardy supporters who turned out at an outdoors rally despite freezing rain and driving winds.
"This is an unbelievable crowd for this kind of weather," the Democratic senator from Illinois, who is bidding to be America's first black president at the youthful age of 47, said to huge cheers in Chester, Pennsylvania.
"If we see this kind of dedication on election day, there is no way that we're not going to bring change to America," Obama said on the final countdown to next Tuesday's vote.
Michael McDonald, a political scientist with George Mason University in Virginia, said about 12 million voters had already cast ballots nationwide ahead of the November 4 election.
McDonald said that based on stated party affiliation, most of the early votes have gone to Obama.
A new Suffolk University poll meanwhile showed Obama surging to a 10 point lead of 50 percent-40 percent over McCain in Nevada, which along with Colorado and New Mexico could be set to flip from Republican red to Democratic blue.
"Barack Obama seemingly has struck a chord with the independent spirit of the West," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston.
"Some of the battleground states that were once solidly Republican are showing blue streaks as we get close to election day," he said.
McCain, 72, pressed ahead with an indoors rally held jointly with his under-fire running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, in the US chocolate capital of Hershey, Pennsylvania.
His campaign, behind in the polls nationally and in pivotal states such as Pennsylvania, was hit with another batch of not-so-sweet headlines with one aide anonymously telling Politico.com that Palin was a "whack job."
McCain acknowledged he had not always seen eye to eye with Palin, 44, a social conservative whose selection as vice-presidential pick has been lambasted by critics from left and right.
"When two mavericks join up they don't agree on everything but that's a lot of fun," McCain said, as his aides were forced to deny reports that Palin was now turning on her new-found mentor with an eye to her own political future.
McCain once again portrayed Obama as an ultra-liberal politician plotting to raise taxes across the board.
"Senator Obama is running to be redistributionist-in-chief, I'm running to be commander-in-chief," he said.
But Obama savaged McCain for running to extend the economic policies of the deeply unpopular Republican president, George W. Bush, as the two camps traded furious barbs over which candidate would better safeguard workers' health care.
"Now, in the closing days of this campaign, my opponent is trying to distance himself from the president he has faithfully supported 90 percent of the time (in Senate votes)," the Democrat said.
"John McCain has ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy toward a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas."
The challenge facing McCain was underlined by his choice this late in the game to head later to North Carolina, which has not voted for a Democratic White House hopeful since 1976 but is now a raging battleground.
Virginia, where Obama headed after Pennsylvania, is an even deeper shade of red. It last backed a Democrat for the presidency way back in 1964, but Obama has a double-digit poll lead in the state.
McCain flew to Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of the vast Fort Bragg army base, with the former Vietnam prisoner of war stepping up his attacks on Obama as unfit to serve as commander-in-chief.
"I've been fighting for this country since I was 17 years old, and I have the scars to prove it," he said in Hershey. "I'm not afraid of the fight, I'm ready for it."
In a small glimmer of hope for McCain, Gallup said 57 percent of voters wanted different parties in charge of Congress and the presidency against 38 percent who backed one-party control.
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