With just one week left in the closely contested presidential election, Vice-President Al Gore and Governor George Bush are making their final pitches to voters, concentrating on swing states which will decide the outcome. Some $100 million is flowing from both campaigns to mobilise voters through television advertising, phone calls, mail drops and knocking on doors.
Mr Bush's lead in the national polls was strengthening as he headed yesterday for California which he is refusing to concede in advance to his Democratic opponent as his father did in 1992 and Mr Bob Dole in 1996.
The Gore campaign has long assumed that California with its rich haul of 54 electoral college votes of the 270 needed to win the White House is safely in its camp. Until recently Mr Gore had a comfortable double-digit lead in the state and was not bothering to buy TV advertising. But Mr Bush has defied the conventional wisdom, regularly visited the state, kept up his advertising and seen Mr Gore's lead shrink steadily.
The Vice-President has now been forced to follow Mr Bush into California this week to rally his forces who are complaining that he is taking the state for granted.
"While my opponent has been busy counting the votes of California, I've been working hard to earn them," Mr Bush said in an advance satellite address to Latino voters who are an important force in the state. "Vice-President Gore has been taking California for granted and hasn't even been there since way back in September."
The Gore campaign is keeping up an air of confidence that all will come right on the night, but it must privately worry about the way the momentum is apparently moving Mr Bush's way in the crucial last week. The response has been to challenge Mr Bush's experience to hold the highest office and to emphasise the booming economy of the Clinton-Gore years.
Mr Gore has left the attacks on Mr Bush to his running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, and other surrogates while he is telling voters that "prosperity itself is on the ballot".
"I personally do not want to pass judgments on my opponent's qualifications to be president because I am biased, but certainly you hear a lot about that," Mr Gore said on CNN's Early Edition yesterday.
But Mr Lieberman had no such hesitations. "I don't think Governor Bush is ready - based on his experience, his record, his proposals in this campaign - to be the kind of president that the American people need at this point in our history," he said in an interview with ABC's This Week.
The Bush campaign has scoffed at what it calls "the negative, divisive, increasingly bitter message" of its opponents. For the last days of the campaign, the Bush team is promising "a strong and positive finish" which will have "an uplifting message".
After their forays to California where both will appear on the popular Tonight Show, the two candidates will head back to the Midwest battleground states where the election could be decided. These include Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri and Minnesota. Pennsylvania with its 23 electoral votes is also seen as swinging both ways but with Mr Bush making more headway.
Mr Bush badly needs to win Florida with 24 electoral votes, but he has run up against a powerful Bush-Lieberman campaign there which is pitched at the state's large number of retirees and Jewish voters.
The former president, Mr George Bush, will campaign there this week for his son.