US Election: Barack Obama returns to the trail
Latest updates as Barack Obama returns to the campaign trail for the first time since Sandy and Mitt Romney campaigns in Virginia.
Latest
15.20 (11.20) As Obama flew over the ruined beaches of New Jersey yesterday he was greeted with the word "Romney" written in the sand. It looks like someone added "sucks" underneath it but that's been partially scrubbed out.
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15.05 (11.05) The Real Clear Politics average has Romney and Obama tied on 47.4, both still shy of the 50 per cent barrier. Worth noting that Romney is probably ahead but that his average has gone down because the Gallup tracker - which usually puts him five points up - has been out of business during the storm.
14.50 (10.50) A lot of Republicans have been muttering about Chris Christie's decision to so emphatically embrace Obama less than a week before the election.
The big man from New Jersey was seen as a huge asset to Mitt during the Republican primary battle but at the time of the convention things tensed up a bit. Christie used his high-profile keynote address to talk mainly about himself, mentioning the Republican nominee only in passing.
Some in the party have noted that he faces his own re-election battle in 2013, fighting in a Democrat state and that being seen with the President is no bad thing. Here's Rush Limbaugh deriding him as a "Greek column" for Obama's re-election campaign (and also seemingly mocking the people who left everything on the Jersey Shore but hey-ho).
14.45 (10.45) Standing to Romney's right is George Allen, the Republican candidate for Senate in Virginia. Allen is a former governor and a former US Senator, which you would think would virtually guarantee him victory. But his opponent Tim Kaine is also a former governor (Virginia has a one-term limit for governor, meaning that there a lot of them floating around and looking for new jobs).
The Virginia senate race has been one of the closest and least predictable of the 2012 cycle, with polls showing Kaine just a single point ahead.
14.35 (10.35) Romney is standing in front of a yellow truck as he slams the President's suggestion that the US should have a cabinet-level Secretary of Business.
I don't think adding a chair in his cabinet will add more jobs to Main Street.
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14.22 (10.22) Romney's focus today is on Virginia, the formerly safe Republican state that went Democrat in 2008 for the first time in 1964. Romney's aides had hoped to have Old Dominion and its 13 electoral votes locked down by now but the polls show it is still neck and neck. The Republican had to cancel to three events over the weekend due to the storm but is speaking in Roanoke now.
We really can't afford four more years like the last four years. I know that the Obama folks are chanting four more years, four more years. But chant is this: five more days, five more days.
14.10 (10.10) If you're four years old this election has basically been going on for half of your life. For little Abigael Evans it was all a bit too much. Don't worry, Abby, only five days to go.
13.50 (09.50) Just because there wasn't any campaigning from the Obama team that's not to say there wasn't politics. Obama flew into New Jersey yesterday where he and the brash Republican governor Chris Christie put on a show of bipartisanship that bordered on bromance, as Nick Allen reports.
The response to Hurricane Sandy has seen an extraordinary and unlikely working relationship develop between President Barack Obama and Chris Christie, the combative Republican Governor of New Jersey.
Mr Christie, an influential supporter of presidential challenger Mitt Romney, had been strongly critical of Mr Obama in the past, accusing him of showing "absentee leadership in the Oval Office."
But, just days ahead of the Nov 6 election, the disaster has turned the two men into a bipartisan double act, each making a public show of setting aside political differences, and praising the other's efforts.
At one point they passed over an area where someone had etched "ROMNEY" in large letters in a sand drift.
13.40 (09.40) The President returns to the campaign trail for the first time today since Superstorm Sandy forced him to call of Monday's joint appearance with Bill Clinton in Florida. But he's making up for lost time with a grueling schedule that will see him in Wisconsin, Colorado and Nevada today before heading to Ohio.
He spends all day Friday in the crucial Buckeye State - where a win could be enough to get him re-elected - and then heads to Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Ohio (again) on Saturday.
13.30 BST (09.30 EST) Good morning and welcome back to our coverage of the US Election .
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