With 48 hours to go, the candidates try to close the deal with America

Less than 48 hours to go, and for Al Gore here and for George W Bush in Florida, the race for the White House has come down to one issue, and one overriding concern. The issue is social security. What matters most of all however, in this closest election in 40 years, is getting out the vote.

Less than 48 hours to go, and for Al Gore here and for George W Bush in Florida, the race for the White House has come down to one issue, and one overriding concern. The issue is social security. What matters most of all however, in this closest election in 40 years, is getting out the vote.

"Back in 1960, John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by an average of one vote per precinct across the country," the vice-President yesterday implored a church meeting that he has to carry this city by a massive margin to win Pennsylvania and its precious 23 electoral college votes, "Now I'm appealing to you to go out and get me an extra vote in every precinct." Just as he had done in at a prayer meeting in Memphis the previous day, in his home state of Tennessee, Mr Gore was seeking succour from the black vote, traditionally heavily Democratic but never more vital to the party's White House cause than now.

After a week of frenetic whirling around a circuit of vital states, even the glossily healthy Mr Gore is showing the strain, his eyes bleary, his speeches honed down to the bare essentials. In Memphis the turnout factor was even more important, given Mr Bush's apparent lead in a state whose loss would not merely be a personal embarrassment for a Tennesseean Vice-President.

"Tuesday is judgement day; get your souls to the polls," Mr Gore told hundreds of black ministers and preachers and a hand-clapping gospel choir.

His voice slipping into the slow southern drawl he adopts back home, he portrayed the race as a choice between good and evil. "I am taught that good overcomes evil if we chose that outcome. I feel a message that on Tuesday we will prevail in Tennessee, and that Memphis will lead the way." It had better. If Mr Gore does not prevail, the loss of Tennessee could be the blow that conclusively scuppers his chances of securing the 270 electoral votes needed for the White House.

But Mr Bush has his problems too. The least of them right now is the drink-driving revelation last Thursday; it is becoming clear that that previously unknown sin, dating back to 1976, may have sent the media into a tizzy, but has left almost every American voter profoundly unmoved.

Far more troublesome is the matter of social security, where Mr Bush's plan to semi-privatise the system, and his apparent ignorance that it is a government-run programme, has gifted the Gore campaign a giant attack opportunity which it has seized like a drowning man seizes a liferaft.

Yesterday here, Mr Gore again seized on Mr Bush's blurted assertion that social security, introduced by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935 and providing state pension and other welfare benefits to everyone, was not after all a federal programme. Oh yes it was, Mr Gore - and now a broadside of new TV attack ads mocking Mr Bush's competence - say. "We must protect and defend it." Mr Bush, meanwhile, was back in Florida yet again to try to nail down a state whose 25 electoral votes make it pivotal to the overall outcome tomorrow.

Though Bill Clinton carried Florida in 1996, the occupancy of the Governor's mansion by his brother Jeb should have put the state squarely in Mr Bush's column.

Unfortunately however, the retirees' paradise of Florida has a higher percentage of pensioners in its population than any other state. In visit after visit, Mr Gore has hammered home his message, that the Bush part-privatisation plan could siphon over $1,000bn out of the kitty, throwing the benefits of Florida's old people into doubt.

Nothing more than desperate scaremongering, Mr Bush said in West Palm Beach, the first stop on a swing which will take him to Miami, Orlando and Tampa.

"They can try to scare, they can make those ugly phone calls, those fake TV ads, but we have a chance on November 7 to purge this country of the old way of politics." But the fact that at this stage of the campaign, he has chosen to devote an entire day to Florida proves just how high the stakes are.

Without it, the Republican's chances of amassing the magic 270 in the electoral college look a great deal more problematic.

But in the end it is turnout which will be decisive. Over the weekend, as through last week, the commitment factor was favouring Mr Bush. His rallies have been far more enthusiastic that those of Mr Gore; privately far more Democratic activists than Republicans fear that their man will lose.

At Republican rallies the hunger for the White House is tangible. The Democrats are seeking to protect what they have, with a candidate who, for all his mastery of the issues, is not exactly a galvaniser of the undecided and the uncaring.

After Philadelphia it was on to Michigan and Wisconsin, two more states the vice-President has to win, then today back to St Louis in the hunt for Missouri's 11 electoral votes, which seem to be edging in the direction of Mr Bush.

But Mr Gore is not giving up, in Missouri or anywhere else. "I need your help," he bellows at every rally, "and with it we'll win." He's not looking for a landslide; just one vote per precinct will do, as it did for JFK four decades ago.