Saeed Minhas from the battleground state of Ohio on the election day reports @ 11.15 am:
Ohio—-Republicans seems to have saved their money for the last day TV advertisements where even the moderate and conservative presidential nominee Senator John McCain is holding no bars and approving every negative ad being aired throughout most of the battleground states.
According to the figures available on America.gov, Democrats nominee Senator Barack Obama raised more than $ 659 million while McCain campaign could raise $ 360 million, while amongst the six contenders for the presidential candidates vying for votes on November 4th, more than one billion dollars for their respective campaigns.
Senator Obama has filled the air and kept his message airing 7/24 throughout the last one month and not only that had to pay for the services of Clintons, Bruce Springsteen and many other crowd pullers because he had the money in the kitty.
Whereas, Senator McCain never contest Obama on TV ads but he tried to bridge this gap by making whirlwind tours of the battleground and dwindling states. He had to make seven states on November 3 to reach to all those undecided or still making up their minds before the polls.
One interesting factor to notice in the last day election campaign was the two different methods used by democrats and Republicans to pull the voters out of their comfy couches and head for polls.
The viz-kids of democrats continued to use the cyber-space to follow the undecided or even their supporters by sending emails showing how to vote, what to do incase of any mix-ups, how to look for paper ballots or how to use ballot machines and what to do incase their names do not appear on the voters list besides knocking on the doors by using hordes of volunteers.
However, McCain’s supporters were not only short of money, and short of volunteers but were also out-minded by the viz-kids of Obama. Nevertheless, McCain supporters are still being seen throwing the leaflets under the doors, placing banners and stand up signs in the front yards and corners of the streets for motivating the people.
However, the campaign managers of McCain camp claim that they have used more direct contact approach during this campaign by finding the pattern of voting and voters leanings through various official and research groups resources and state of the art computers. That’s why they are hopeful that “Mac is Back” slogan will give the required push to the undecided voters.
So over all it seems that the campaign in the very last moments is all about youth energy versus the mind-power of the experienced campaigners and time is not far to find out who will win this race.
Though polls still suggest Obama’s overall lead of 7 percentage points and trading on stocks on both the candidates–which I feel is more unscientific and more emotional—showing Obama having a rate of 9o cents to 9.5 cents of McCain, suggest that Obama is the winner but as we say that it isn’t over until it’s over. So wait and see, a lot more to come in the coming hours.