Bush, Kerry gear up for final debate as polls show close race

SANTA FE, New Mexico (AFP) - With polls showing the US presidential race too close to call, the incumbent George W. Bush heads for the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado to shore up his Republican base there while preparing for his last nationally televised face-off with Democrat John Kerry.
Bush was scheduled to address members of the military in Colorado Springs as polls indicated the race in the state was tightening.
On Monday, campaigning in New Mexico, Kerry accused Bush of breaking a pledge to make OPEC hike oil production, and vowed to wean US consumers off Middle East oil, while Bush attacked Kerry on Iraq.
"I want America's energy future, I want America's security to be in the hands of Americans and in our own ingenuity, our own innovation, not the Saudi royal family or others around the world," Kerry said in this New Mexico city, pointing to record oil prices.
Bush continued to assail Kerry's position on Iraq as he campaigned in Hobbs, a small town on New Mexico's border with Texas, where the president owns a ranch.
"With a straight face, he said he had only one position on Iraq. He must think we're on another planet," Bush said.
Their campaigns swung through the southwestern United States as both men geared for a final debate in the city of Tempe, Arizona, that will focus on domestic issues after two rounds of fireworks on Iraq.
National polls split over who was leading the US presidential race, but Kerry showed signs of making headway against Bush in the decisive state-by-state battle.
A Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll three weeks before the November 2 ballot put Bush on top 51 to 46 percent, and a survey by the Rasmussen organization gave the Republican a four-point margin at 49.5 to 45.5 percent.
But a tracking poll by the Zogby International group showed Kerry, the four-term senator from Massachusetts, with a three-point edge at 47-44 percent heading into the final stretch of an acrimonious, marathon campaign.
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll gave Kerry a 49 to 48 percent lead over Bush among likely voters, while a poll in mid-September had given Bush a 54 to 40 percent edge.
The conflicting results highlighted a race still too close to call and which shows every indication of careening to the same cliffhanger finish as four years ago when the outcome hinged on a bitter recount in the state of Florida.
Kerry pulled even with Bush on the strength of a commanding performance over the Republican president in their first televised debate on September 30. A second encounter last week was judged a tie, and a third is scheduled for Wednesday.
The Democrat's most significant gains, several analysts and commentators said, were in a string of so-called battleground states that will decide the presidency on the particular US system of electoral votes.
The winner needs a majority of the 538 electoral votes apportioned among the states and earned in separate, mostly winner-take-all contests.
Bush won in 2000 by five electors while losing the popular tally to then vice president Al Gore by more than half a million votes, and the electoral chessboard looks every bit as tight this year.
The president seemed assured of at least 206 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, while Kerry had 214, according to an AFP analysis of various state polls.
Ten states with a total of 118 electors were up for grabs: five that voted Democratic for the presidency four years ago and five that went Republican.
Eric Davis, a professor of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont and a presidential historian, predicted weeks ago that Bush might end up with between 300 and 330 electoral votes. On Monday he sounded a different tune.
Davis told AFP that Bush still had a "slight edge," but added, "I would say at this point that the winner of the election would be whoever wins two out of three of the group Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida."
Kerry was likely to be helped by a new report that found that more than a quarter of American working families -- or nearly 39 million people -- have trouble making ends meet and can be qualified as poor due to a fast shrinking pool of well-paying jobs.
Although the study, conducted jointly by the respected Annie E. Casey, Ford and Rockefeller foundations, refrained from direct partisan blame, it appeared to back Kerry's argument by insisting that "our society has not taken adequate steps to ensure that these workers can make ends meet and build a future for their families."
A total of 28 million jobs, or almost 25 percent of all available in the country, can no longer keep a family of four above the poverty level, the study found.