President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney entered their final weekend of campaigning Saturday facing a stubborn landscape of competitive states that, right to the end, are producing equal shares of hope and fear amid conflicting signals about the outcome.
The president, fighting to avoid being turned out of office four years after a rousing and historic victory, sought to shore up his standing in Midwestern states that had backed him enthusiastically last time. He assumed a defensive posture in Iowa and Wisconsin, two states where his advisers had openly scoffed at his rival's chances only months ago.
Romney, in the closing days of his second quest for the White House, worked to harness the enthusiasm running through the Republican Party to overcome the challenges he confronts in building an Electoral College majority. He fought to secure critical states like Florida and Virginia – where both sides continue to advertise at saturation levels – without allowing others to slip away.
But after hundreds of millions of dollars in television commercials, months of campaigning and three widely viewed debates, the race was locked in the same dynamic that has defined it from the start: Obama, burdened by four years of economic struggle and partisan animosity but still an inspiration to his party, holding the slightest of edges in Ohio and other swing states and Romney, bearer of the hopes of conservatives and voters convinced the nation is on the wrong path, fighting to overtake him.
The last defining question was whether Romney's support had hit a ceiling – blunted by Obama's opportunity to show leadership in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Sandy — or whether he was on the verge of unseating a president in a dramatic finale.
In the closing hours of the campaign, Obama raced through four states Saturday as he tried to build enthusiasm among Democrats by declaring, “I've got a lot of fight left in me.” And Romney sought to tap into disappointment and discontent among voters as he rallied supporters, saying, “I promise change, and I have a record of achieving it.”
The confidence expressed by both campaigns belied the tight nature of the contest in at least seven states. In their respective headquarters, advisers made convincing cases for why their candidate had the clearer path to 270 electoral votes, but when pressed they admitted to sleepless nights about a result that was expected to come down to a only sliver of the electorate.
The pursuit of Ohio's electoral votes drew the most attention, with the candidates scheduling multiple stops there before Tuesday, but the rest of the landscape was also highly volatile. Obama had the edge in Nevada and Romney in North Carolina, strategists agreed, while Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin were far closer.
In Wisconsin, Romney rallied voters Friday as his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, a native son, fought to rewrite the historical trends of a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Republicans lost the state by only a hairbreadth in 2000 after George W. Bush spent months tirelessly campaigning.