Barack Obama and John McCain made their economic pitches to voters in Pennsylvania this morning as both campaigns focus on a narrow band of battleground states with one week to go before Election Day.
Mr McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, continued to hit Obama on taxes, saying in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that the Democratic presidential candidate favors "redistributing wealth."
Mr Obama, speaking at a rally 85 miles away in Chester, Pennsylvania, continued making what he calls his "closing argument" and accused the Republicans of "trying to throw everything at me in these last seven days."
Mr Obama is trying to solidify gains on territory that Republicans have held in the last two presidential elections while Mr McCain is defending those states and attempting to peel away Pennsylvania, which has voted for the Democratic candidate in the last four elections.
"It's going to come down to the wire here," Ms Palin told a cheering crowd at the Giant Center sports arena in Hershey.
Foul weather forced Mr McCain to scrub his second scheduled Pennsylvania stop and he is moving on today to North Carolina and Florida. North Carolina has given its electoral votes to the Republican in nine of the last 10 elections and Florida has gone Republican in eight of those elections.
Mr McCain's decision to visit both states so close to the election illustrates his campaign's concern about Mr Obama's strength there.
Along with Pennsylvania, where he has an average lead of 11 percentage points in polls of the state's voters, according to RealClearPolitics.com, Mr Obama is campaigning today in Virginia, which last went to the Democratic presidential candidate in 1964.
Mr Obama's average poll lead there is 8 points. The four states combined have 76 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim the White House.
The slowing economy is a central issue in the campaign. Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania were among 41 states that lost jobs in September, according to the Labor Department. Both candidates struck populist themes.
Mr Obama said that in spite of the economi ccrisis, "Wall Street bank executives are set to walk away with billions of bonuses at the end of this year. They might call them bonuses on Wall Street, but here in Pennsylvania we call that an outrage."
He repeated his promise to cut taxes for households with incomes under $250,000 a year, end breaks for businesses that he said are moving US jobs overseas and eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses.
Mr McCain, 72, has been seeking to portray Mr Obama and congressional Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals who would raise taxes.
"He is more interested in controlling wealth than in creating it, in redistributing money instead of spreading opportunity," the Arizona senator said. "Senator Obama is running to be redistributionist-in chief. I'm running to be commander-in-chief."