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It’s election day today – Barack Obama coasts into final preparations confident of his support, while John McCain keeps up an intense schedule of last-minute rallies until the very end. Obama has held fewer events attracting tens of thousands of voters at his three Ohio rallies – 60,000 in Columbus, 80,000 in Cleveland alongside Bruce Springsteen, and 25,000 in Cincinnati. McCain has had many more rallies, each attracting a few thousand supporters. The political landscape of the nation seems to have changed dramatically in this past year, particularly over the summer. Once red states turned purple and many are now blue. In the last two presidential races, Democrats held strong in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast, while Republicans dominated the South, parts of the Mid-west, and the Mountain west. Now, with the extraordinarily high turn-out among African American voters, Obama looks like he’s breaking the Republican dead-lock on the south. In the Mountain west, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada could also turn blue, and in the Mid-West, Ohio is narrowly blue, with Indiana and Missouri up in the air.

GUEST: Leigh-Ann Caldwell, FSRN Correspondent. For more information, visit www.fsrn.org.