US Elections 4 Days to Go:REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL candidate John McCain and his Democrat opponent, Barack Obama, exchanged new blows about each other's economic policies as official figures showed that the United States may already be in recession.
The Democrat remains in the lead in opinion polls and is set to win traditional Democratic states, as well as four that have been solidly Republican in the past - Ohio, Nevada, Colorado and Virginia - while he ties with Senator McCain in Florida and North Carolina.
The Republican charged that an Obama-led administration would increase taxes, contrary to the Democrat's claim: "We can't let them get away with making a bad economy even worse," he said.
"Now is the time to grow our economy, and that's what I'm going to do. With one week left in this campaign, the choice facing Americans is stark," he said, speaking in Cleveland, Ohio, adding that Americans are "beginning to figure out" that Senator Obama's plans could cost "millions of jobs".
However, Senator Obama tied Mr McCain to the unpopular president George W Bush: "It is a direct result of the Bush administration's trickle-down, Wall Street first, Main Street last policies that John McCain has embraced for the last eight years and plans to continue for the next four."
The state of the US economy, which has dominated the presidential battle over the last month, continued to do so yesterday following US commerce department statistics that consumers have pulled back on spending by the largest amount in 28 years.
During a day when he travelled to rallies in Florida, to hotly contested Virginia and Missouri, Mr Obama said the Republican simply "wants to take the wheel" from President Bush: "Why would we keep on driving down this dead-end street?" he asked supporters.
The latest Quinnipiac poll asserts that Mr McCain has closed the gap on his opponent in Ohio, one of the key states, but the Democrat remains comfortably ahead in Pennsylvania, where Mr McCain has campaigned hard in recent days.
In Florida, Mr Obama leads narrowly by 47 per cent to 45 per cent, down from the five-point advantage he enjoyed a week ago, while the distance between the two in Ohio is down to nine points in favour of the Democrat, from 14 points a week ago.
However, Pennsylvania, which has 21 votes in the electoral college that eventually elects the next president, is still favouring Mr Obama by 53 per cent to 41 per cent, which is virtually unchanged on a week ago.
The polls have an error margin of between 2.6 and 2.7 percentage points.
Former US vice-president Al Gore, who lost his bid for the White House in 2000 after a bitter battle with George W Bush over the result in Florida, will campaign there tomorrow for Mr Obama, who was accompanied at a midnight rally there on Wednesday by former president Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile, it emerged that Mr Obama's $4 million (€3.1 million) 30-minute prime-time broadcast on three major television networks was watched by 26.3 million people, while millions more saw it aired on a number of smaller Spanish-language channels.
Real-life histories of ordinary Americans, chosen from the key battleground states, were used to highlight existing problems with healthcare, pensions and job losses, and to serve as a backdrop for Mr Obama's proposed solutions.
Promising to introduce new rules to cut medical bills, cut taxes for the middle classes and end the war in Iraq, the Democrat pledged to reduce America's energy use, "retool" the US car industry and offer incentives to motorists to trade in heavy-consumption cars.
In the 30-minute "infomercial", shown on Fox, CBS and NBC, and some English and Spanish-language cable networks, Mr Obama said he would not be able to be a "perfect" president.
"I'm reminded every single day that I am not a perfect man. I will not be a perfect president.
"But I can promise you this: I will always tell you what I think and where I stand," he said.
Mr McCain suffered embarrassment in front of television cameras when he sought to introduce Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher, who came to national attention after he questioned Mr Obama about his tax plans, before a rally in the state - only to find that Mr Wurzelbacher had not turned up.
Millions of Americans have already cast their ballot for the November 4th election, though long queues, broken voting machines and problems with voter registration are being reported in many states, while voting hours have been extended in Florida.
A leading voting rights lawyer, Barbara Arnwine of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said states "are doing the best that they can", but with a record turnout and poor investment, the system is "not ready yet" for the millions more who are preparing to vote.