Campaigns enter final day in preparation for the election

The final push is on for Election Day. The key for candidates now is to find a way to get supporters to the polls. Iowa Democrats say they’ve already gotten over 100-thousand party faithful to cast absentee ballots. Republicans haven’t waged that kind of an early-voting push, counting on most of the G-O-P to trek to the polling sites on election day. To that end, President Bush is here to lead a rally in vote-rich eastern Iowa this morning. Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Gross says the President’s visit to Cedar Rapids will “super-charge” turnout.On the Democrat side, the two Toms — Governor Tom Vilsack and U.S. Senator Tom Harkin — will start their day in Cedar Rapids, too, shaking hands with workers at the Quaker Oats plant. Then, the duo will climb aboard a bus and stop in six other cities (Waterloo, Charles City, Mason City, Marshalltown, Ames and Des Moines) to rally Democrat voters. The final media polls released this weekend show the incumbent Governor, Tom Vilsack, and incumbent U.S. Senator, Tom Harkin, holding leads, although the Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows Republican challengers Greg Ganske and Doug Gross closed some ground in the past week. That’s what Gross is focusing on rather than his 12-point deficit in the Register poll.Gross says he’s confident “the wind is in our sails” heading to Election Day. The Register’s Iowa Poll shows Vilsack leading 52-to-40 percent among likely voters surveyed last week. The Senate race poll shows Harkin holding a nine-percentage-point lead, 50-to-41, over Ganske. The Cedar Rapids Gazette poll of over a thousand likely voters found a much wider margin for Harkin — a 22-percent gap (50.6 percent to 28.6 percent). The Gazette’s poll was conducted on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, and also showed Governor Vilsack leading Doug Gross by 12-point-seven percent (46.5 percent to 33.8 percent).