Bush seeks to solidify republican districts

With control of Congress at stake in tomorrow’s elections, US president George Bush campaigned in endangered Republican districts across conservative states while the top congressional Democrat campaigned for her party in the left-leaning North-East.

“Here’s the way I see it,” Bush told a crowd inside an auditorium in Grand Island, Nebraska, yesterday. “If the Democrats are so good about being the party of the opposition, let’s just keep them in the opposition.”

Republicans are hoping their party’s acclaimed get-out-the-vote operation can prevent a Democratic rout in a campaign marked by voter fury over the Iraq war.

Meanwhile, Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, hoping to become the first female leader of the House of Representatives, was cautiously optimistic about her party’s chances tomorrow. “We are thankful for where we are today, to be poised for success,” she said in Colchester, Connecticut. “But we have two Mount Everests we have to climb – they are called Monday and Tuesday".

Her party appears increasingly confident it can ride a wave of public disenchantment with the administration’s policies to victory in the House and, possibly, the Senate.

Two days before the election, both parties focused on turning out voters. The numbers historically are low in non-presidential year elections, with only about 40% of US citizens of voting age casting ballots.

Republicans and Democrats have sent out thousands of volunteers in states with the most contested races to work phone banks and canvass neighbourhoods. Both parties also have assembled legal teams for possible challengers in case of voting problems.

Candidates were making their final pitches. Republicans repeated their assertion that Democrats would raise taxes and prematurely pull out of Iraq if they controlled Congress. Democrats pressed their case for change, arguing that Republicans blindly have followed Bush’s “failed policy”.

“I will not vote to raise taxes for working men and women,” vowed Democrat Jim Webb before 200 cheering supporters in mountainous Grundy, Virginia. He is trying to oust first-term Republican Senator George Allen in one of the three most hotly contested Senate contests.

Allen campaigned to Virginia voters in Landover, Maryland, outside the stadium where the area’s NFL football team the Washington Redskins play. The senator’s late father, George H Allen, once coached the team. “There’s no more perfect place to illustrate the need for a two-minute drill than a Redskins-Cowboys game,” Allen said, comparing his campaign’s final hours to a football game’s closing seconds.

Up for grabs are all 435 House seats, 33 Senate seats, governorships in 36 states, and thousands of state legislative and local races. Democrats need a gain of 15 House seats and six in the 100-member Senate to control Congress.