SCRANTON, Pa. — Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton spent Monday, their last day before Pennsylvania’s pivotal presidential primary, scrapping for votes on the airwaves, in diners and at rallies across the state.
Polls showed that Clinton maintained a 5 to 7 percentage-point lead through the weekend, small enough to suggest that Obama could pull an upset.
Both camps labored hard to keep expectations down and gain any edge in last-minute campaigning. Clinton headed to Scranton, home turf of sorts for her, since her grandfather worked in a local lace mill and her father was born there.
“One day to victory, that’s what the challenge is,” the New York senator told an enthusiastic crowd. “We really need to bear down.”
Obama, also in Scranton, ate waffles at a local diner — perhaps some symbolism to remind voters of his claims that Clinton often changes positions on key issues, such as the Iraq war.
“I’m not predicting a win,” Obama told a radio interviewer. “I’m predicting it’s going to be close and that we are going to do a lot better than people expect.”
About half the state’s 4.2 million Democrats are expected to turn out today. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. EDT.
At stake are 158 delegates to the Democratic convention, but more important, momentum in the last big state scheduled to vote during the nominating season. A loss by Clinton, who a month ago held a 15 to 20 percentage-point lead in most major polls, would be seen as devastating.
Obama has a different task: He must show that he can win in a big, diverse state. He has lost to Clinton on similar turf, notably neighboring New Jersey and in Ohio.
While the candidates tried to rev up crowds in key swing areas such as Scranton, they also sparred on the airwaves and through surrogates.
Clinton began running a 30-second ad Monday that in effect was her closing statement.
“It’s the toughest job in the world,” she told viewers, who then saw images of some of recent American history’s most critical moments and nemeses — the stock-market crash, Pearl Harbor, Osama bin Laden, Hurricane Katrina and others.
“You need to be ready for anything,” she said, “especially now, with two wars, oil prices skyrocketing and an economy in crisis. Harry Truman said it best: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Who do you think has what it takes?”
Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton quickly responded, reminding everyone that Clinton voted in 2002 to give President Bush broad authority to wage war.
“It’s ironic that she would borrow the president’s tactics in her own campaign and invoke bin Laden to score political points,” he said. “We already have a president who plays the politics of fear, and we don’t need another.”
Clinton was scheduled to spend much of her day stumping, ending the day in Philadelphia with a massive rally at the Palestra, the legendary basketball barn where five of the city’s major colleges used to play.
Obama also was barnstorming the state, starting his day with a visit to the Glider Diner in Scranton. At the old-style diner, founded in 1945 by two World War II veterans, Obama met a local radio host who got him to agree to record a promotion for the show on the cellphone.
Then he encountered Lance Perry, a 57-year-old Vietnam veteran who owns a roofing company. They talked about the need for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to get screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and get better access to mental and physical services.
“We’ve got to open up more VA clinics,” Obama said. “We’ve got to make sure that we increase the GI benefit. And we’ve got to make sure we’ve got more people processing disability claims quicker.”
