After drawing huge crowds in Colorado on Sunday, Obama plans for the bold summing up, in the campaign’s final week, in his speech in Ohio on Monday. Obama is projected as near or above the 270 electoral votes needed to become the President of US – the first African American President.

According to his campaign, in what will be his “closing argument” speech in Canton, Ohio, Senator Obama will tell voters that after twenty-one months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he intends doing differently from George Bush, especially on the economy issue.

The Illinois Senator will urge voters to choose “hope over fear, unity over division.” Fired up by an astonishing prowess at fundraising, Obama will follow up his Ohio speech with a 30-minute advertisement airing on national networks at huge expense on Wednesday night.

The Democrat is also pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to keep McCain on the ropes in Republican bastions out east, including Virginia and North Carolina. In fact, both the White House contenders flew east, after wrangling in the western states of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, which could seal victory for Obama if he can win all the states that Democrat John Kerry captured against Bush in 2004.

A recent ABC News-Washington Post national poll has given Obama a 52-45 per cent lead over McCain among likely voters, from his 54-43% margin last week.

However, McCain swears a comeback, and said he believes he is going to win the “very close” presidential race. The Republican told NBC television on Sunday: “We’ve closed in the last week. We’ll continue to be very competitive in many of the battleground states.”