Democrats pray turnout will be on their side

With eight days left in the campaign, Democrats and Republicans are mounting a desperate drive to persuade their voters to go to the polls in a presidential election increasingly overshadowed by charges of intimidation and attempted vote suppression by both parties.

"Go and vote and we're going to make sure your votes get counted," Terry McCauliffe, the Democratic Party chairman, urged supporters of John Kerry yesterday, as he referred to reports that Republicans plan massive checks of voters at polling stations in Ohio and other battleground states.

Despite high passions on both sides - and a years-long effort by Republicans to mobilise conservative Christian voters - the rule of thumb remains the higher the turnout, the better for Democrats. Every sign is that record numbers of Americans will vote in 2004, certainly more than the 106 million in 2000. Today Democrats wheel out their most effective get-out-the-vote weapon: Bill Clinton will make his first appearance since heart surgery in early September.

The former President, who can fire the Democratic base as no other, will be with Mr Kerry at a rally in Pennsylvania, then travel on his own to two other closely fought states, Florida and New Mexico. Democratic strategists hope Mr Clinton will galvanise black voters, a traditional Democratic constituency which is less enthusiastic about Mr Kerry than it was about Al Gore four years ago. The Republicans are sending Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California and their most glamorous national figure, to Ohio, where polls suggest the Democrat may have taken a fractional lead in the chase for the state's 20 electoral college votes.

Ohio is emerging as a potential battleground as contentious and controversial as Florida in 2000. Republicans, and to a lesser extent Democrats, have enlisted thousands of party workers to monitor polling stations across the state, ostensibly to ensure voters are properly registered and eligible.

Democratic leaders accuse their opponents of deliberately trying to complicate voting, deterring first-time and poorer voters. They fear that faced by checks and queues at polling stations, some who would have voted for Mr Kerry will give up. But some of these concerns may be exaggerated, with Americans casting early ballots in record numbers.

The Washington Post, which endorsed Mr Kerry yesterday, said more than 1.3 million people had voted by Friday in eight of the swing states. Some analysts believe up 20 per cent of all votes may be cast before 2 November.

With the vote just eight days away, there was no rest for the candidates on the penultimate Sunday of the campaign, which every poll says rests on a knife-edge, the outcome hingeing on a dozen or fewer swing states, where the result will be decided by the turnout.

On Saturday, President George Bush criss-crossed Florida, and yesterday he was in Alamogordo, New Mexico, a state Al Gore took by just 365 votes, but which Republicans hope to capture this time. Mr Kerry was in Florida.

A new poll by Newsweek puts the President ahead by two points but an AP survey gave Mr Kerry a 49-46 edge among likely voters.Most others give Mr Bush a similar or slightly larger advantage, but always within the statistical margin of error.

The independent candidate Ralph Nader is becoming less of a factor. Most polls give him 1 per cent or less, and he has been denied access to the ballot in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The indications are, morever, that unlike in 2000 when he is credited with costing Al Gore the election, Mr Nader's support is drawn from Mr Kerry and Mr Bush in roughly equal measure.