Vice-President Al Gore and Governor George Bush each sought divine intervention as they campaigned in crucial states in the last hours before an election still too close to predict.
Church services and prayer breakfasts spurred the candidates to make a last all-out effort to win vital votes in the most closely contested election in 50 years.
Mr Bush continues to hold a narrow lead in several national polls. But the winner of the 270 electoral college votes needed to get to the White House now depends on voters in a handful of large states where Mr Gore is ahead according to the polls.
The revelation by a Democratic activist at the end of last week that Mr Bush was convicted of drunk driving 24 years ago has not been seen so far as damaging the Republican contender. In the latest CNN/USA Today poll, 77 per cent said it was "not relevant" compared with 16 per cent who said it was. But with the election so close, political observers say that now every vote will count.
Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan with 67 electoral votes are now the main battlegrounds to decide the outcome.
The latest Reuters poll shows Mr Gore winning Michigan, but Florida and Pennsylvania are "too close to call".
Both men are expressing full confidence they are heading for victory and four years in the White House. Mr Gore told reporters in his campaign plane: "We're going to win. Write it down - book it."
Mr Bush is said to be so confident that his campaign has stopped private polling and has begun arrangements for the transition period between the election tomorrow and the Inauguration on January 20th .
Mr Bush campaigned yesterday in Florida after a prayer breakfast with the evangelist preacher, the Rev Billy Graham, who is a friend of the Bush family.
A frail Mr Graham later told reporters that "I don't endorse candidates but I've come as close to it now, I guess, as any time in life. I believe in the integrity of this man. I've known him as a boy. I've known him as a man."
Mr Gore also attended prayer breakfasts and meetings with African-American ministers as he sought to turn out the maximum black vote. One of these was in his native state of Tennessee which is now leaning towards Mr Bush. It would be a huge blow to Mr Gore to lose his own state and it is practically unheard of for a presidential candidate to do so.
Mr Gore stirred some controversy when he insisted at a prayer breakfast in Memphis that "good overcomes evil" but he later denied that he was calling Mr Bush "evil".
Mr Gore has stepped up his attacks on Mr Bush, questioning his qualifications to be President and mocking him for apparently not realising that the social security scheme has been a federal government programme since it was set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
President Clinton campaigned for his Vice-President in his home state of Arkansas which is also in the "too close to call" category. "We've got to get the troops out," Mr Clinton told party workers at their headquarters in Little Rock. "You have to go to their homes and pull them out."
Asked how it looked for Mr Gore in Arkansas, Mr Clinton replied "close."