US PRESIDENT Barack Obama wrapped up his last day of campaigning for midterm election candidates in Illinois and Ohio yesterday, as opinion polls continued to predict a Republican victory.
The Republicans are expected to take control of the House of Representatives, win at least seven Senate seats and a half dozen governors’ offices in elections tomorrow.
According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 49 per cent of likely voters will cast votes for Republicans, 45 per cent for Democrats, with a margin of error of 3 per cent. A larger than expected turnout by Democrats could change results.
The GOP is positioned to pick up as many as 58 House seats. “My number is 39,” the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, told CNN, referring to the number needed to obtain a majority. In the past year, the GOP has won gubernatorial and senate byelections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Mr Obama travelled to the symbolic states of Illinois and Ohio in the hope of raising turnout. At a Democratic rally on Saturday night, he said: “Chicago, I need you to keep on fighting. Illinois, I need you to keep on believing. I need you to knock on some doors. I need you to talk to your neighbours. I need you to get out the vote in this election . . .”
Mr Obama spent the night in his own house in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighbourhood. It would be a blow to the president’s prestige if his former Senate seat were to fall to the Republicans. But Alexi Giannoulias, the Democratic candidate, has had difficulty in distancing himself from the collapse of his family’s Broadway Bank. He and the Democratic governor Pat Quinn have been hurt by the scandal of the previous governor, Rod Blagojevich, trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat.
“There is no doubt that this is a tough election,” Mr Obama said. “It’s tough here in Illinois. It’s tough all over the country.” Mr Obama later visited Ohio for the 12th time since his election and the second time in two weeks. Democratic governor Ted Strickland is running neck-and-neck with John Kasich, a former Republican congressman who worked for eight years for Lehman Brothers.
Among a group of Democrats polled by Associated Press-Knowledge Networks, 47 per cent said Mr Obama should be challenged for the 2012 presidential nomination, and 51 per cent said he should not be. Opinions are expected to change if the economy recovers or if Mr Obama outmanoeuvres a Republican Congress.
Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate, last week said she would stand for president in 2012 “if there’s nobody else to do it”. Ms Palin told Fox News yesterday that voters must say, “You blew it, President Obama”, at the polls tomorrow.
Palin also called CBS reporters “corrupt bastards” for allegedly trying to smear Joe Miller, the Tea Party Senate candidate from Alaska whom Palin has endorsed.
Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi and chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said a strong turnout for Republican candidates will be seen as a repudiation of Obama’s policies.