A desperate quest for votes

Coast to coast, border to border, Al Gore and George W Bush dashed zigzag fashion across the country in quest of the last precious votes that will bring one of them victory. With the presidency of the United States now hinging on turn-out and campaigning time measured in hours, their manic aeroplane rides charted an electoral map of the country, its demography and its mood.

Coast to coast, border to border, Al Gore and George W Bush dashed zigzag fashion across the country in quest of the last precious votes that will bring one of them victory. With the presidency of the United States now hinging on turn-out and campaigning time measured in hours, their manic aeroplane rides charted an electoral map of the country, its demography and its mood.

The cross-continent dash is the last great ordeal of a presidential election. And for their electoral finales, these two very different candidates remained true to themselves.

For Mr Gore it was a gruelling 30-hour progress of Midwestern worthiness, topped off with a risqué midnight rally beneath the palms of Miami Beach. For Mr Bush, it was a cheeky breakfast-time incursion into his rival's home state, Tennessee, with an equally cheeky day's-end dip into the President's home state of Arkansas. From there he was set to arrive home in Austin in nice time for a welcome rally - doubtless followed by cocoa and biscuits and a good night's sleep in his state governor's mansion. Mr Bush's route seemed dictated by confidence and a certain devil-may-care panache; Mr Gore's by the seriousness of the task still before him and his instinct that the way to a goal lies through hard graft.

But their routes, and those of their running mates, were determined also by the finest of electoral calculations, culled from customised polling. Every stop had a purpose: to get out the vote in a state, or even in a single constituency that could swing the election their way. If it could also help a would-be congressman locked in a close race, so much the better.

Mr Gore's route took him not just to Iowa, unexpectedly a battleground state this year, but to a marginal constituency near Cedar Rapids with a large pensioner population that might tip to the Democrats. In the even more closely contested state of Missouri, Mr Gore rallied the faithful around the widow of the Democrats' late governor and senate candidate, Mel Carnahan, who will be nominated to fill the seat in her late husband's place if the dead man wins the bizarre posthumous contest.

At two separate rallies in working-class Flint, in the neck-and-neck state of Michigan, Mr Gore targeted the Democrats' traditional base, the unionised car workers and black churchgoers, drumming home the populist message "I'll fight for you" that put him back in the presidential race in the summer. With Mr Bush a couple of points ahead in Michigan, Mr Gore made one last effort to ignite enthusiasm among loyal but time-pressed Democrats who might otherwise stay at home.

Aside from his almost frivolous digs at the Clinton-Gore administration, Mr Bush also had some cementing of his base to do. He flitted from Chattanooga in eastern Tennessee up north to Green Bay at the head of the delicately balanced Fox River Valley that Republicans desperately want to keep. Fox River, it is said, can tip evenly balanced Wisconsin one way or the other; a Bush visit, his third in two weeks, could just make the difference. Fox River could be described as the Republicans' Flint: a bellwether district that could carry the whole state in its wake.

Mr Bush's sorties into Iowa and Arkansas were equally finely judged. The Republicans could capture both states, but there is nothing to be taken for granted. The Bentonville corner of Arkansas is probably the most Bush-friendly part of the state: less ideologically conservative than the eastern districts, but orientated to big business, with the headquarters of commercial icons such as Wal-Mart and Tysons foods.

But if anything testified to the closeness of today's election it was the second-tier routes plied by the candidates' running mates. Few would have believed the last 24 hours before polling would find Joe Lieberman, for the Democrats, in the usually safe Democratic state of Minnesota, trying to fend off an incursion from the Green Party that could present the contest to the Republican. Or in the New England states of Maine and New Hampshire, which have just four electoral college votes apiece but are deadlocked between the parties.

Nor would many have envisaged the coolly competent Dick Cheney tramping the reputedly liberal states of Washington and Oregon in the hope of exploiting the unexpectedly strong support for the Greens to Mr Bush's advantage. And there in Las Vegas, yesterday morning, was Mr Cheney, a former defense secretary and not a natural contender to rally the casino capital, trying to jack up support in a seat that might just determine control of the Senate.

The 2000 elections are the most expensive on record. When the voting is over, it is estimated the total cost, across presidential and congressional elections, will exceed $3bn (£2bn), almost 50 per cent more than four years ago, itself a record. Candidates raised record sums, with George W Bush collecting $100m for his primary campaign alone.

The main expenditure for a presidential candidate is television advertising, but travel, security and event arrangements also eat up the dollars: chartering planes and buses, airport facilities, accommodation, as well as building stages, renting sound systems and organising the ritual balloon and confetti drops and fireworks that follow most rallies.

At dawn this morning, only the hyperactive Mr Gore was still in motion, en route to his home state of Tennessee, and his Nashville headquarters. From Miami, he had stopped off in Tampa on the Gulf Coast, to greet the state's first voters. Mr Lieberman, who dashed from from western Pennsylvania to join the Vice-President in Tampa, was heading home to Connecticut, (where he is also running for the Senate), to cast his vote.

Mr Cheney meanwhile was tucked up in his home town of Jackson, Wyoming; where he was also to vote this morning. And Mr Bush was just waking up for his early morning run. After the best part of 18 months on the road and in the air, the two men who aspire to the White House could do no more. Their fate rested in the hands of the voters.