Candidates take battle to swing states

Fresh off an intently combative debate, President Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney and their running mates are taking their tuned-up fight to the precious few battleground states where the election is still up for grabs with just 19 days to go.

In the sprint to the Nov 6 election day, every aspect of the campaign seems to be taking on a fresh sense of urgency — the ads, the fundraising, the grassroots mobilising and the outreach to key voting blocs, particularly women. Romney quietly began airing a new TV ad suggesting he believes abortion “should be an option” in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at stake.

The ad is an appeal to women voters, who polls show have favoured Obama throughout the race, although Romney has been making gains among them. Romney supported abortion rights as Massachusetts governor but now says he opposes abortion with limited exceptions. His campaign didn’t announce the ad, but it began running on the debate night on stations that reach Virginia, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Romney was heading to Virginia and sending running mate Paul Ryan to Ohio — two states that Obama won four years ago where the GOP ticket has been making its most aggressive run. Obama was headed to Iowa, while Vice President Joe Biden was westward bound for Colorado and Nevada.

Obama appears to have 237 of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory comfortably in hand, and Romney is confident of 191. That leaves 110 electoral votes up for grabs in nine battleground states: Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6) and New Hampshire (4).

The two candidates debated on Tuesday night as if their political lives depended on it, because they do. It was a re-energised Obama who showed up at Hofstra University, lifting the spirits of Democrats who felt let down by the president’s limp performance in the first debate two weeks ago.

But Romney knew what was coming and didn’t give an inch, pressing his case even when the arguments deteriorated into did-not, did-too rejoinders that couldn’t have done much to clarify the choice for undecided voters.

Tuesday night’s debate was the third installment in what amounts to a four-week- long reality TV series for Campaign 2012. Romney was the clear victor in the series debut, while Biden aggressively counterpunched in the vice presidential debate, and the latest faceoff featured two competitors determined not to give each other an inch.

It was a pushy, interruption-filled encounter with charges and countercharges that the other guy wasn’t telling the truth. The two candidates were both verbally and physically at odds in the town hall-style format, at one point circling each other centre stage like boxers in a prize fight.

“I thought it was a real moment,” Biden said yesterday. “When they were kind of circling each other, it was like, ‘Hey, come on man, let’s level with each other here.’”

Romney, brimming with confidence, distilled the essence of his campaign message early in Tuesday’s 90-minute debate and repeated it often.

“I know what it takes to get this economy going,” he said over and over. And this: “We can do better.” And this: “We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through.”

Obama, with both the benefit and the burden of a record to run on, had a more nuanced message.

“The commitments I’ve made, I’ve kept,” he said. “And those that I haven’t been able to keep, it’s not for lack of trying and we’re going to get it done in a second term.”

With just 19 days left, polls show an extremely tight race nationally. While Republicans have made clear gains in recent days, the president leads in several polls of Wisconsin and Ohio. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio.