U.S. Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney told voters Friday they should not settle for four more years of President Barack Obama's policies, as he laid out his final argument ahead of Tuesday's elections.
"Look to the record, to the accomplishments and the failures and the judgments. Words are cheap. A record is real, and it's earned with real efforts," Romney said in West Allis, Wisconsin.
"Real change is not measured in words. Real change is measured in achievements. And, four years ago, candidate Obama promised to do so very much. But he's fallen so very short."
The speech came just four days before Tuesday elections as Romney and Obama crisscrossed the country to rally voters.
Romney began the day in Wisconsin, home to his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan, where Obama leads in opinion surveys, but by
only a narrow margin. Both candidates would spend much of their day
in Ohio, considered a must-win state under the US electoral system.
Romney pointed to himself as the candidate of real change and
vowed to set aside partisan differences from day one and get
Americans "back to work."
Obama and Romney remain locked in a dead heat in national polls.
Obama dismissed Romney as a "very talented salesman," but said his
policies had been tried and failed under George W Bush.
"We know what we want to do works. We know what they want to do
doesn't work," he said. "We know what we want to do grows our middle
class; what they want to do squeezes the middle class. We know that
our strategy makes sure that we bring our deficit down in a balanced
way; their strategy ends up shooting the deficit up."
The economy continues to top voters' concerns. Fresh data released
Friday showed the unemployment rate edged up to 7.9 percent in
October.
The data reflected an uptick from September, when unemployment had
been recorded at 7.8 percent, according to the government's monthly
household survey.
A separate survey of employers found that payrolls added more jobs
that expected, up by 171,000, while the civilian labour force
expanded by 578,000 to 155.6 million.
Most voters, however, had already long made up their minds and the
new data would do little to sway them, said one citizen, Mike Lanier,
42, over a morning coffee in the swing state of Virginia.
"People are most worried about the economy and, if you see
undecided voters, they'll probably go for a change," said Lanier, who
said he plans to vote for Romney.
At a rally Friday morning in Hilliard, Ohio, Obama pointed out
that October payroll growth was the largest in eight months.
"We have made real progress, but we are here today because we know
we have more work to do," he said.
