Rivals lobby in swing states

The race for the White House remained a dead heat as the candidates criss-crossed the country making their closing arguments in key battleground states on Sunday.

President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are separated in national polls by a fraction of a percentage.

Obama started his day off in New Hampshire traveling with the popular former president Bill Clinton. He then stopped in Florida and Ohio, and was then set to visit Colorado before touching down in Wisconsin in the early hours of Monday morning.

The candidates crossed paths only in Ohio on Sunday, a state which will yield a critical 18 electoral votes.

"Two days! Two days and we go to work!" Romney shouted on Sunday at his first event in Des Moines, Iowa. He then continued on to Virginia and held a surprise rally in Pennsylvania, a Democratic-leaning state that Republic strategists said could be turning in their favor.

A Wall Street Journal poll on Sunday gave Obama a one percent lead in a national poll, 48 to 47 percent, but that figure had not yet been factored into the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls, which still gave Obama only a 0.2 percent lead.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll released on Sunday, of 3,805 likely voters polled nationally, 48 percent said they would vote for Obama, while 47 percent sided with Romney.

The results fall within the poll's "credibility interval," a tool used to account for statistical variation in Internet-based polls.

An estimated 27 million people on Sunday had already cast ballots in early voting. More than 130 million Americans voted in the 2008 presidential election.

ccp/rc (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)