President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry courted voters Sunday in the make-or-break states of Florida and Ohio, squeezing every minute out of the last 48 hours of a race that could swing either way. So far neither candidate has managed to stake a lead, with Washington Post and Fox polls placing them dead even, even as national security fears leapt to the forefront with the 11th-hour appearance of Osama bin Laden on Friday.
Both men tried to work bin Laden's video address to the American people to their political advantage, with Kerry using the tape to remind voters that Bush has failed to capture the man who launched the September 11, 2001 strikes on the United States, and the president's camp accusing the Massachusetts senator of opportunism.
"America knows that I bring 35 years of experience, more experience than George Bush has in foreign affairs and national security affairs," Kerry told ABC television.
"I'm going to hunt down, capture and kill the terrorists, and I believe I will wage a far more effective war on terror than George Bush has," Kerry said, before shifting the focus onto the war in Iraq and reiterating the list of presidential failings that have formed a major part of his campaign platform.
Kerry began his day in Ohio, receiving communion at a Roman Catholic Church before joining African American worshippers at Shiloh Baptist church in Dayton. He headed to the tiny north-eastern state of New Hampshire, and then on to Florida.
Bush, meanwhile, was stumping across Florida before travelling north to Ohio.
Votes in either state could prove crucial in the all-important scrap for electors, the super-votes awarded state-by-state that actually determine who wins the US presidency.
The latest surveys ahead of Tuesday's election pointed to a photo finish to rival the 2000 contest, with the possibility a candidate could lose the popular vote and win the presidency for the second straight time.
The bin Laden tape returned the focus of the campaign to national security, as surrogates for both candidates staged back-to-back to television interviews on Sunday morning political talk shows.
Kerry adviser Bob Shrum again accused Bush of diverting resources from the hunt for bin Laden by launching the invasion of Iraq.
"The issue is that we diverted our forces and our focus from Afghanistan. We went to Iraq. We created a mess in Iraq. It's a terrorist haven that it wasn't before," he told the "Fox News Sunday" program.
Bush adviser Karen Hughes accused the Democratic camp of "engaging in shameful politics, claiming that we missed a chance to get him."
"So it's just shameful that (Kerry) would try to use this moment, which is a moment for all Republicans, all Democrats and all Americans to express our revulsion at this face of evil ... that he would try to use that to score political points," she said.
Republican Senator John McCain said bin Laden's tape "focuses all our attention on the transcendent issue, which is the war on terror," where polls show Americans trust Bush more than Kerry.
A report Sunday said American voters have not been swayed by the video message broadcast Friday, in which the mastermind of the September 11 attacks warned US voters they will be held accountable for any leader who seeks to persecute Muslims.
The New York Times, which said it interviewed dozens of voters in five key states after the broadcast, found that most people had already made up their minds, and their convictions remained unshaken.
Majority of Hispanics support Kerry: poll
MIAMI: A clear majority of Hispanics in the United States plan to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, according to a poll published by the Miami Herald on Sunday, two days ahead of election day.
The survey shows 61 percent of Hispanic voters support Kerry and 33 percent are for Bush. Democratic strategists have been aiming at keeping Bush's Hispanic support below the 35 percent mark.
About 6.9 million Hispanics, or six percent of the electorate, are expected to vote in the presidential that has Kerry running neck-and-neck with President George W. Bush.
The poll of 751 likely voters was conducted by Zogby International last week, and has a margin of error of 3.7 percent.
The national background of the respondents roughly reflected the composition of the US Hispanic population, with about 58 percent of them Mexican Americans, 10 percent Puerto Ricans, 3.5 percent Cuban Americans, two percent Dominican and 26 percent other nationalities.
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