Runners’ high — Bush, Gore hit the final stretch

for both candidates. On his part, George Bush strode into the Gore-Clinton turf, visiting their home states ofTennessee and Arkansas, both of which are now borderline Republican.

While Gore is straining to extract every vote with a carefully calibrated campaign in the swing states, the Bush camp appears more relaxed. Bush actually went to New Jersey on Sunday although the state is said to be beyond his grasp and is not as vital in his scheme of things as other battleground state.

Meanwhile, nationwide polls show the race has tightened even more. A Reuters/ MSNBC poll now puts it at 47-46 for Bush, a statistical dead heat. Ralph Nader is still at 5 per cent and would seem to hold Gore’s fate in his hands.

But a surprised surfaced in a Newsweek poll which put Gore ahead 44 per cent to Bushs 41 per cent.

The latest Reuters count gave Bush a slight lead in the Electoral College with 209 votes solid or leaning strongly toward him. Gore had 196 votes and 133 were too close to call.

Most pundits zeroed in Florida, saying as Florida goes, so does the nation, predicted NBCs Tim Russert.

On Sunday, both candidates swept into meeting after meeting, exhorting supporters to vote and bring out the vote. Automated telephone calls soliciting votes rang in millions of homes across the country. Just as an example: the Bush campaign has made 70 million phone calls, sent 110 million pieces of mail and deployed 243,000 volunteers in battleground states alone in the last 10 days. The Gore camp isn’t far behind.

Both campaigns splurged money in the final hours. This has also been by far the most expensive election in history with an estimated $ 3 billion being spent on just the Presidential and Congressional campaigns.

The single most expensive race involves First Lady Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio with the tab running to more than $ 60 million. In the New Jersey Senate race, Democrat Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, is said to have ploughed in a record $57 million of his own money into the race.

Individual donors have also opened up like neverbefore to promote their causes. Actress Jane Fonda has splurged $ 12 million for abortion rights, while Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, whose firm funded Sabeer Bhatia’s Hotmail, wrote a cheque for $ 20 million to promote school vouchers.

While that is no laughing matter, the American people broke off last night to enjoy a wildly popular comedy show that has kept them in splits for years.

Sunday’s biggest event was a two-hour special on NBC that captured the best of presidentialspoofs over the past 25 years. Saturday Night Live, which is credited with destroying the presidency of George Bush, trained its guns on the two candidates.

Gore was repeatedly portrayed as a hyperbolic bore and Bush was panned as an intellectual dimwit. After watching themselves skewered, both candidates made brief appearances in a newscast that followed to show they could laugh at themselves.

Poking fun at his own frequent incoherence, Bush said he was “ambilavent” when first invited to be on the broadcast, since he considers some of its comedy“offen-sible.”

Gore spoofed his penchant for hyperbole by claiming “I was one of the very first to be offended by material on Saturday Night Live.”