Doug Mills/The New York Times
Former President Bill Clinton appeared with President Barack Obama at a campaign event in Concord, N.H., on Sunday.
WASHINGTON — President Obama and Mitt Romney entered the final 48 hours of campaigning on Sunday with bravado tinged with urgent warnings to their supporters that the hard-fought race for the White House remained razor-close.
The rivals started the day with rallies in the two competitive states where the presidential campaigns begin every four years and where the fates of their political futures could be decided this year at the last minute: Iowa and New Hampshire.
Flanked by former President Bill Clinton in the shadow of the New Hampshire State House in Concord, Mr. Obama vowed to continue his efforts to improve a recovering economy and expressed confidence of an incumbent that voters in the battleground states would give him the chance to try.
But he also betrayed the nervousness of a first-term president whose hopes for another four years — and the opportunity to continue shaping his legacy — hinges on a half-dozen states that could go either way on Tuesday.
“I am not ready to give up the fight, and I hope you aren’t either, New Hampshire,” Mr. Obama said at a rally that attracted thousands of people, his voice already growing hoarse at the start of a long day of campaigning. “We have come too far to turn back now. We have come too far to let our hearts grow faint.”
“We will win New Hampshire,” he concluded. “We will win this election. We will finish what we started. We will renew those bonds that do not break.”
Mr. Romney spoke moments earlier in Des Moines, also expressing the certainty of success and telling about 4,400 supporters that the clock had nearly run out on the president’s time in office. He promised a new era of economic hope for families who are struggling.
“Instead of building bridges, he’s made the divide between our parties wider,” Mr. Romney said. “Let me tell you why it is he’s fallen so far short of what he’s promised: it’s because he cared more about a liberal agenda than he did about repairing the economy.”
Mr. Romney is racing from swing state to swing state with the intensity of a candidate who recognizes that he is trailing in the polls — if only slightly — behind Mr. Obama in many of the states he must win to accumulate the 270 electoral votes he needs to become president.
“We thank you; we ask you to stay with it. All the way, all the way to our victory on Tuesday night,” Mr. Romney told the crowd, urging them to work hard in the last hours. “It’s possible that you may have some friends or maybe even family members who haven’t made up their mind yet who to vote for.”
The two candidates have scheduled a flurry of rallies in the next two days to drum up the kind of enthusiasm that they hope will be evident at polling places on Tuesday.
Mr. Obama drew a crowd estimated at 14,000 people who gathered for an outdoor rally below the gleaming dome of New Hampshire’s capitol. It was bright and chilly, recalling any number of days that he and other candidates had walked the streets of Concord to win the nation’s first primary every four years.
Not far from where Mr. Obama spoke was a reminder of how New Hampshire almost dashed his dreams in 2008. On a line of granite stones in front of the State Library are chiseled the names of the winners of past primaries, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose victory in 2008 halted, for a time, Mr. Obama’s surge after he had won the Iowa caucuses.
The president was to move on to Florida and Ohio on Sunday before making final stops in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa on Monday. Mr. Obama is expected to head home to Chicago on Tuesday to watch returns from his campaign headquarters.
Mr. Romney’s schedule on Monday resembles the president’s as he heads to the handful of states that could determine the results on Tuesday. Mr. Romney plans events in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire on Monday after visiting Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia on Sunday.
Candidates Make Final Dash as Race Winds Down
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Candidates Make Final Dash as Race Winds Down
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Candidates Make Final Dash as Race Winds Down
