Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Obama boarded Air Force One on Saturday to campaign in four states. They included Iowa, where he and Mitt Romney both planned to visit Dubuque.
MILWAUKEE — President Obama and Mitt Romney entered their final weekend of campaigning on Saturday facing a stubborn landscape of competitive states that right to the end are producing equal shares of hope and fear amid conflicting signals about the outcome.
The president, fighting to avoid being turned out of office four years after a rousing and historic victory, sought to shore up his standing in Midwestern states that had backed him enthusiastically last time. He assumed a defensive posture in Iowa and here in Wisconsin, two states where his advisers had openly scoffed at his rival’s chances only a few months ago.
Mr. Romney, in the closing days of his second quest for the White House, worked to harness the enthusiasm running through the Republican Party to overcome the challenges he confronts in building an Electoral College majority. He fought to secure critical states like Florida and Virginia without allowing others to slip away.
But after hundreds of millions of dollars in television commercials, months of campaigning and three widely viewed debates, the race was locked in the same dynamic that has defined it from the start: Mr. Obama, burdened by four years of economic struggle and partisan animosity but still an inspiration to his party, holding the slightest of edges in Ohio and other swing states, and Mr. Romney, bearer of the hopes of conservatives and voters convinced the nation is on the wrong path, fighting to overtake him.
The last defining question was whether Mr. Romney’s support had hit a ceiling — blunted by Mr. Obama’s opportunity to show leadership in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Sandy — or whether he was on the verge of unseating a president in a dramatic finale.
Supporters, donors and advisers to Mr. Romney, in battleground states and at the campaign headquarters in Boston, said in conversations over the last two days that they had hoped to be closing the campaign in a stronger position, with clear leads in at least some of the battleground states. Now, several of them said, their optimism comes from the uncertainty in the closing hours of a contest, rather than any affirmative command of the race.
Mr. Obama raced through four states on Saturday as he tried to build enthusiasm among Democrats, appearing after a performance here by the singer Katy Perry to urgently tell a crowd of thousands, “We have come too far to turn back now; we have come too far to let our hearts grow weary.” Mr. Romney sought to tap into disappointment and discontent among voters as he rallied supporters, telling a rally in Portsmouth, N.H.: “He’s offering excuses. I’m offering a plan. I can’t wait to get started.”
The outlook expressed by both campaigns belied the tight nature of the contest in at least seven states. In their respective headquarters, advisers made convincing cases for why their candidate had the clearer path to 270 electoral votes, but when pressed they admitted to sleepless nights about a result that was expected to come down to only a sliver of the electorate.
The pursuit of Ohio’s 18 electoral votes drew the most attention, with the candidates scheduling multiple stops there before Tuesday, but the rest of the landscape was also highly volatile. Mr. Obama had the edge in Nevada and Mr. Romney in North Carolina, strategists agreed, while Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin were far closer.
Here in Wisconsin, Mr. Romney rallied voters on Friday as his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, a native son, fought to rewrite the historical trends of a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
The president, who carried Wisconsin by 14 percentage points in 2008, arrived here in Milwaukee on Saturday afternoon. His campaign advisers thought the contest here was narrow enough to send him back to the state on Monday for a rally with an even bigger music star, Bruce Springsteen.
“It’s always tantalizingly close for Republicans, and I assume that’s where we are at with this one,” said James E. Doyle, a former Democratic governor of Wisconsin, who was among the early supporters of Mr. Obama.
The defeat this year of an attempt to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, left behind a well-trained contingent of voters that Mr. Romney and his team will try to return to the polls. State laws that allow same-day registration in Wisconsin and in Iowa were seen by advisers to the Obama campaign as an advantage in their efforts to turn out younger voters.
Obama and Romney Zero In on Battleground States
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Obama and Romney Zero In on Battleground States
