With the pace of the campaign hotting up in the final two weeks, both presidential candidates descended yesterday on Tennessee, home state of Vice-President Al Gore, in the search for vital votes.
Until recently Tennessee, with its 11 electoral votes, was considered safe for Mr Gore, who has his campaign headquarters in the state capital of Nashville. But it is now seen as a "toss-up" state which could go either way.
So is President Clinton's home state of Arkansas, with six electoral votes, where Mr Gore also campaigned yesterday. By the end of this week Mr Gore will have campaigned in 11 states which the Clinton-Gore ticket won fairly easily in 1992 and 1996.
This shows the pressure which Mr Bush is putting on Mr Gore in the home stretch of an election which has become the most exciting since the Kennedy-Nixon contest in 1960.
Mr Gore is also under pressure from the Green Party candidate, Mr Ralph Nader, in several states which Democrats should be confident of winning against the Republicans. In Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington Mr Nader is seen as taking valuable support from Mr Gore, whom he accuses of "betraying" his pledges of fighting for a cleaner environment and against the power of big corporations.
Mr Nader refers contemptuously to Mr Bush as "a corporation in human form" but he is less likely to win over Republicans than Democrats with his "green" policies. Democrats had hoped that Mr Pat Buchanan, who defected from the party to run for Ross Perot's Reform Party, would damage Mr Bush by attracting conservative voters, but this does not seem to be happening.
The closeness of the race is shown in polls which have Mr Bush leading by a mere two points, inside the margin of error. Where last week Mr Bush was confident that he had the "momentum", now Mr Gore says that his opponent is "dead in the water" and accused him of trying to "hold the ball, run out the clock and hide behind tracking polls".
The pattern of previous weeks seems to be repeating itself where Mr Bush goes up in the polls immediately after a debate with Mr Gore and then gradually falls back. The CNN/USA Today tracking poll had Mr Bush ahead by 11 points at the end of last week, but yesterday this lead had dwindled to two points.
But Mr Bush continues to exude confidence that he will be declared the winner on election night on November 7th. His campaign spokesman, Mr Dan Bartlett, said: "It speaks volumes that Al Gore will have to campaign in his home state of Tennessee with just two weeks left in the campaign".
The Gore campaign has launched an assault on Mr Bush's record as Governor of Texas by distributing a video in nearly 100 cities in 20 of the closely fought states. The 10-minute video of interviews with Texans derides Mr Bush's record on air quality, schools, medical care and improving living conditions for the poor. TV advertising by Democrats also homes in on Mr Bush's record in Texas.
Mr Bush, for his part, is attacking Mr Gore's plan to save social security, claiming that it would create $40 trillion in debt by the middle of the century. "Long after Al Gore has left public office, the Gore debt will come due," Mr Bush told enthusiastic crowds in Milwaukee. "And $40 trillion is a lot of money even for someone who has been in Washington most of his life."
Meanwhile there is Democratic concern that the less well-off voters that Mr Gore is targeting for tax cuts and other relief are less likely to turn out than the better off, who like Mr Bush's policies. A survey by the Centre for the Study of the American Electorate shows that only 29 per cent of those earning under $10,000 voted in 1996, down from 44 per cent in 1964.
Mr gore has sprung back into a three-percentage-point lead over Mr Bush in the see-saw race, the Reuters/MSNBC daily tracking poll said yesterday.