SAN JOSE: White House hopefuls launched a frantic blitz for votes heading into “Super Tuesday” and the home stretch of the costliest US election campaign in history.

Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were criss-crossing the country over the weekend, touring places from California to New York and points in between before Tuesday’s primaries in nearly two dozen states.

The Tuesday vote will go far in determining who the Democratic and Republican party nominees are likely to be for the November presidential election.

“No matter what happens, I want every one of you with a child or a grandchild to look into the eyes of that precious child and say yes, you can be whatever you want to be in America,” Clinton told exuberant supporters here late yesterday .

To counter Clinton’s appeal to women voters, the Obama campaign announced it is deploying the candidate’s wife Michelle, TV megastar Oprah Winfrey, and Caroline Kennedy, daughter of slain president John F. Kennedy (president 1961-1963). The trio will be at a Sunday rally in Los Angeles.

A new national poll out yesterday showed Obama gaining on the New York senator in the historic 2008 White House race as he bids to be the country’s first black president.

According to the Gallup poll, the Illinois senator was trailing by just three percentage points with 41 percent of the vote to 44 percent for Clinton, who is also on a historic quest to be the first woman president.

The figures, which were within the poll’s three-point margin of error, suggested Obama was mopping up spare votes after former senator John Edwards quit the race.

But other polls by Fox News and Rasmussen showed Clinton holding a six-point national margin over Obama.

Hot on the Democrats’ heels were Republican hopefuls John McCain and Mitt Romney. Arizona senator McCain was to address rallies in Illinois, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia before arriving back in Washington late today .

The same Gallup poll gave McCain a 15-point lead with 39 percent to 24 percent for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. Mike Huckabee was trailing third.

All the campaigns took note of economic trouble after 17,000 job losses were announced in January.—AFP