Candidates campaign to the very last minute

WASHINGTON - Coast to coast, border to border, Al Gore and George W. Bush dashed zigzag fashion across the country in quest of the last precious votes that will bring one of them victory today.

With the Presidency of the United States now hinging on turnout and campaigning time measured in hours, their manic plane rides charted an electoral map of the country, its demography and its mood.

Last night Bush scored a symbolic victory, capturing the vote in a tiny New Hampshire town that traditionally casts one of the first ballots in the election. Voters in Dixville Notch backed Bush by a margin of 21 to five. Polling closes at 11 am New Zealand time and a result is expected by 4 pm.

Yesterday's cross-continent plane dash was the last great ordeal of the election. And for their electoral finales, these two candidates remained true to themselves.

For Gore it was a gruelling 30-hour progress of Midwestern worthiness, topped off with a risque rally beneath the palms of Miami Beach. For Bush, it was a cheeky breakfast-time incursion into his rival's home state, Tennessee, with an equally cheeky day's end dip into the President's home state of Arkansas. From there he went home to Austin, Texas, in nice time for a welcome rally - doubtless followed by cocoa and biscuits and a good night's sleep in his state Governor's mansion.

Bush's route seemed dictated by confidence and a certain devil-may-care panache; Gore's by the seriousness of the task still before him and his instinct that the way to a goal lies through hard graft. But their routes, and those of their running mates, were determined also by the finest of electoral calculations, culled from customised polling. Every stop had a purpose: to get out the vote in a state, or even in a single constitutuency that could swing the election their way. If it could also help a would-be Congressman locked in a close race, so much the better.

Gore's route took him not just to Iowa - unexpectedly a battleground state this year - but to a marginal constituency near Cedar Rapids with a large pensioner population that might tip to the Democrats. In the even more closely contested state of Missouri, Gore rallied the faithful around the widow of the Democrats' late Senate candidate, Mel Carnahan, who will be nominated to fill the seat in her late husband's place if the dead man wins.

At two separate rallies in working-class Flint, in the neck-and-neck state of Michigan, Gore targeted the Democrats' traditional base - the unionised car workers and black churchgoers - drumming home his populist message "I'll fight for you." With Bush running a couple of points ahead in Michigan, Gore made one last effort to ignite sufficient enthusiasm among loyal, but time-pressed Democrats who might otherwise be tempted to stay at home.

Aside from his almost frivolous digs at the Clinton-Gore Administration, Bush also had some cementing of his base to do. This is why he flitted from Chatanooga in eastern Tennessee up north to Green Bay at the head of the delicately balanced Fox River Valley that Republicans desperately want to keep in their column. Fox River, it is said, can tip evenly balanced Wisconsin one way or the other; a Bush visit - his third in two weeks - could just make the difference. Fox River could be described as the Republicans' Flint: a bellwether district that could carry the whole state in its wake.

Bush's sorties into Iowa and Arkansas were equally finely judged. The Republicans could capture both states with a little effort, but there is nothing to be taken for granted.

The Bentonville corner of Arkansas is probably the most Bush-friendly part of the state: less ideologically conservative than the eastern districts, but orientated towards big business.

But if anything testified to the closeness of today's election it was the second-tier routes plied by the two candidates' running mates. Few would have believed that the last 24 hours before polling would find Joe Lieberman, for the Democrats, in the usually safe Democratic state of Minnesota, trying to fend off an incursion from the Green Party that could present the contest to the Republicans. Or in the New England states of Maine and New Hampshire, just four electoral college votes apiece, but deadlocked between the two parties.

Nor would many have envisaged the coolly competent Dick Cheney, tramping the reputedly liberal states of Washington and Oregon in the hope of exploiting the unexpectedly strong support for the Greens to Bush's advantage.

Nor was the former Defence Secretary a natural contender to rally the casino capital, Las Vegas, to the Republican cause. But there he was to jack up support for the Republican candidate for a seat that might just determine control of the Senate.

Last night Gore was en route to his home state of Tennessee, and his Nashville headquarters, from the Gulf coast of Florida. Cheney was in his home town of Jackson, Wyoming; Lieberman was back home in Connecticut, (where he is also running for the Senate), after a late side-trip into the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

After the best part of 18 months on the road and in the air, the two men who aspire to be White House could do no more. Their fate rested in the hands of the voters.

- INDEPENDENT

Good turnout as US chooses president and legislators

Electoral College votes crucial to presidency

Omens good for Hillary's Senate bid

* The Herald Online's coverage of voting in the US presidential election begins at noon today.