Barack Obama re-elected as President of the United States

After waiting patiently for more than five hours, the crowd at McCormick Place near the heart of downtown Chicago, erupted in a reverberating cheer as their newly-re-elected President, Barack Obama finally emerged on stage accompanied by his wife and daughters.

Mr. Obama, his voice hoarse from a brutally relentless final week of the campaign blitz, seemed equally fired up as he outlined his vision for America’s future in an emotional speech. While he promised that “the best is yet to come,” he equally appeared to call for bipartisan support in tackling some of the country’s greatest current challenges.

He said, “By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won't end all the gridlock, resolve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move this country forward.” Yet offering a starting point for cooperation, he argued that “the common bond” was where the two parties ought to begin.

That bond was however truly tested and stretched during many months of campaigning, as conflicting views on every subject from job-creation to women’s reproductive rights appeared to drive the two parties further apart.

However, on Tuesday night, Mr. Obama sealed Mr. Romney’s fate when won resoundingly in battleground states such as Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado and Wisconsin. The outcome in Florida, Virginia and Nevada was still not decided, yet Mr. Obama secured 303 electoral college votes, well above the 270 required to win the presidency. Mr. Romney cornered 206 votes.

Undisputed though his victory was, the President doubtless realised that his strong mandate may be blunted yet again by a truculent Congressional opposition, whose ranks hardly affected by the vote.

In the House of Representatives, specifically, Republicans succeeded in maintaining their grip on the balance of power as they were projected by the Associated Press to win 224 seats and were leading in 15 more. In the Senate the Democrats managed to cling on to a total of 51 seats, while the Republicans faced a slight reduction in their numbers, to 45 seats.

While Mr. Obama’s dramatic win this evening means that there will unlikely be any further question of repealing his landmark healthcare reform package nationally, he may well have to rely extensively on Congressional support to pass further such game-changing legislation, including comprehensive immigration reform.

He will also find himself in a profoundly challenging policy environment again at the end of the upcoming “lame duck” session, when he will have to sit down with members of Congress to thrash out a solution to the looming fiscal cliff problem that could wreak havoc upon public expenditures and lead to further economic hardships if unresolved.

Possibly indicating that forging a bipartisan consensus would be a top policy agenda item for him, he noted in his victory speech, “Now, we will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get [to our future]. As it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts. It's not always a straight line. It's not always a smooth path.”

House of Representatives Speaker, John Boehner seemed to echo this sentiment when said in his reaction to Mr. Obama’s victory, “If there is a mandate, it is a mandate for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs, which is critical to solving our debt.” Yet Mr. Boehner was also keen to stay close to his party’s core principles. He added, “The American people also made clear there’s no mandate for raising tax rates.”

However Mr. Obama too put out a clear indication that he would not be backing down from the fundamental values of the Democratic Party, arguing. “We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened up by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”

Election Night tweets

The best Election Night tweets

Battle fought, Obama and Romney

Battle fought, Obama and Romney await voters' verdict

US President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have closed out their hard-fought and deeply negative battle for the White House, yielding center stage to voters who face a stark choice on Election Day between fundamentally different visions for the country's  future.

After months of campaigning and billions of dollars spent in the battle for leadership of the world's most powerful country, Obama and Romney were in a virtual nationwide tie ahead of Tuesday's election, an overt symptom of the vast partisan divide separating Americans in the early years of the 21st century.

Obama appeared to have a slight edge, however, in some of the key swing states such as Ohio that do not vote reliably Democratic or Republican. That gives him an easier path to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Romney decided to make a late dash to Cleveland and Pittsburgh for rallies on Tuesday before returning to his Boston home to await the returns. Obama, who spent Monday night at his home on Chicago's South Side, opted to make a dozen radio and satellite TV interviews from Chicago to swing states to keep his closing arguments fresh in voters' minds.

Romney has made a late-campaign drive for Pennsylvania, a state that had been seen as solidly in the Obama column. The move was widely seen as a push - perhaps against all odds--to compensate for Obama's expected victory in Ohio.

Under the US system, the winner of the presidential election is not determined by the nationwide popular vote but in state-by-state contests. The candidate who wins a state - with Maine and Nebraska the exceptions - is awarded all of that state's electoral votes, which are apportioned based on representation in Congress.

Both sides cast the Election Day choice as one with far-reaching repercussions for a nation still recovering from the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression and at odds over how big a role government should play in solving the country's problems
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"It's a choice between two different visions for America," Obama declared Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, asking voters to let him complete work on the economic turnaround that began in his first term. "It's a choice between returning to the top-down policies that crashed our economy, or a future that's built on providing opportunity to everybody and growing a strong middle class."

Romney argued that Obama had his chance and blew it.

"The president thinks more government is the answer," he said in Sanford, Florida. "No, Mr. President, more jobs, that's the answer for America."
It wasn't just the presidency at stake Tuesday: All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, a third of the 100 Senate seats, and 11 governorships were on the line, along with state ballot proposals on topics ranging from gay marriage to legalizing marijuana. Democrats were expected to maintain their majority in the Senate, with Republicans doing likewise in the House, raising the prospect of continued partisan wrangling no matter who might be president.

The two candidates and their running mates--Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan--stormed through eight battleground states and logged more than 6,000 flight miles (9,600 flight kilometers) Monday on their final full day of campaigning.

Obama's final campaign rally, Monday night in Des Moines, Iowa, was filled with nostalgia as he returned to the state which launched him on the road to the White House in 2008 with a victory in its lead-off caucuses over Hillary Rodham Clinton, now his secretary of state. A single tear streamed down Obama's face during his remarks, though it was hard to tell whether it was from emotion or the bitter cold. The president had campaigned earlier in the day in Wisconsin and Iowa.

Obama, making his last run for office at the still-young age of 51, was tickled to have rocker Bruce Springsteen along as his traveling campaign, telling the crowd in Madison, "I get to fly around with him on the last day that I will ever campaign - so that's not a bad way to end things." The president urged voters in Iowa to help him finish what they started here four years ago. "I've come back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote," Obama told 20,000 supporters at the outdoor rally. "This is where our movement for change began."

After rallies in Florida, Virginia and Ohio, Romney returned Monday night to New Hampshire, where he won the state's first-in-the-nation primary in January, speaking to about 10,000 people at the Verizon Wireless arena.

Romney, 65, assailed Obama's economic policies amid the recession, and promised to bring change that he asserted Obama had only talked about.
"Talk is cheap, but a record is real," Romney said. If elected, Romney would be the first Mormon U.S. president.
The final Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, released Monday, showed Obama with support from 50 percent of likely voters to 47 percent for Romney. The poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

Fitting for a tight election, voters in tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, split over the candidates, Obama and Romney receiving five votes each when balloting took place at midnight. In nearby Hart's Location, the hamlet that shares the traditional honor of casting the first presidential ballots on Election Day, Obama won with 23 votes, Romney received nine and Libertarian Gary Johnson received one.

More than 30 million absentee or early ballots have already been cast, including in excess of 3 million in Florida.

Obama and Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the ultra-wealthy founder of a private equity firm, have spent months highlighting their sharp divisions over the role of government in Americans' lives, in bringing down the stubbornly high unemployment rate, reducing the $1 trillion-plus federal budget deficit and reducing a national debt that has crept above $16 trillion.

The economy has proven a huge drag on Obama's candidacy as he fought to turn it around after the near financial meltdown and deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, a downturn that was well under way when he replaced George W. Bush in the White House on Jan. 20, 2009.
Obama insists there is no way reduce the staggering debt and safeguard crucial social programs without asking the wealthy to pay their "fair share" in taxes. Romney, who claims his successful business background gives him the expertise to manage the economy, favors lowering taxes and easing regulations on businesses, saying this would spur job growth.

In surveys of the battleground states, Obama held small advantages in Nevada, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin - enough to deliver a second term if they held up, but not so significant that they could withstand an Election Day surge by Romney supporters. Romney appears to be performing slightly better than Obama or has pulled even in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida.

The biggest focus has been on Ohio, an industrial state that has gone with the winner of the last 12 presidential elections, which both candidates visited Monday. No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.

Both campaigns say the winner will be determined by which campaign is better at getting its supporters to the polls. The president needs the overwhelming support of blacks and Hispanics to counter Romney's big lead among white males.

Romney, who described himself as "severely conservative" during the Republican primary campaign, has shifted sharply in recent weeks to appeal to the political center, highlighting his claim to have been deeply bipartisan when he was governor of Democratic-leaning Massachusetts.

The forecast for Election Day promised dry weather for much of the country, with rain expected in two battlegrounds, Florida and Wisconsin. But the closing days of the campaign played out against ongoing recovery efforts after Superstorm Sandy. Election officials in New York and New Jersey were scrambling to marshal generators, move voting locations, shuttle storm victims to polling places and take other steps to ensure everyone who wanted to vote could do so.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer expects volumes

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer expects volumes on Windows Phone to 'ramp quickly'

TEL AVIV: Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Windows Phone 8 being launched with its partners would create a strong third player in the smartphone market and sell quickly. 
"With the work we have done with Nokia, HTC,Samsung and others ... there is now an opportunity to create really a strong third participant in the smartphone market," Ballmer said at an event to launch Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system in Israel, referring to Google's Android and Apple's iOSplatforms. 

"We're still relatively small ... I expect the volumes on Windows Phone to really ramp quickly." 

Ballmer said Microsoft will do more marketing and advertising around Windows 8, its Surface tablet and Windows Phone than any products the company had ever done. 

Presidential campaign to swing States

Presidential campaign sends prominent backers to swing States

On the final weekend of their deadlocked campaign, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney called forth every supporter they could muster to gain any possible edge they could find.

In a tiny New Hampshire town, four out-of-state surrogates for Romney chatted with the lunchtime crowd at a diner decorated with a pink Cadillac on stilts. In Reno, Nev., an Olympic speedskater talked up the Republican nominee. In Virginia, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina targeted voters in military communities. Two of Romney's sons campaigned door-to-door in Florida.

Not to be outdone, the Obama campaign sent out its stars on Saturday. Katy Perry, decked out in a body-hugging blue leather dress with the Obama campaign slogan "Forward" on it, rocked the stage before Obama's speech in Milwaukee. John Mellencamp did an acoustic rendition of "Small Town" in Dubuque, Iowa. Dave Matthews was scheduled to perform ahead of Obama's appearance Saturday night in Northern Virginia.

And at Cleveland State University, about 100 students were treated to an impromptu concert on Saturday morning by Stevie Wonder, who then went to an early voting center and spoke briefly on Obama's behalf on the steps of a church across the street.

"They are not mega events, but the kind of things that keep people interested and give them a sense of how important the ground game really is," explained Tom Rath, a Romney adviser who shepherded a surrogate foursome — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, former senator James Talent of Missouri and Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee — through New Hampshire on Saturday.

Both campaigns tried to assert momentum in other ways, too. At Obama's Chicago headquarters, aides trumpeted favorable headlines from the Circleville Herald, a 6,600-circulation Ohio newspaper, and Ha'aretz, the Israeli news source. And at Romney's Boston headquarters, aides tried to gin up a controversy over Obama's remark Friday that voting against Romney is "the best revenge," producing a new ad overnight and trying to pump outrage across Twitter.

The candidates themselves flew in and out of many of the same battleground states, delivering the same dueling messages: the incumbent trying to convince the nation that he has made real progress and the challenger offering himself as an agent of change.

Romney began his weekend in his adopted home state of New Hampshire, where he was hoping to draw undecided voters and, perhaps, Obama supporters to his side.

"I need you to spend some time in the next three days to see neighbors — and maybe ones with an Obama sign in front of their home — and just go by and say, 'Look, let's talk this through a bit.' Because, you see, President Obama came into office with so many promises and he's fallen so far short," Romney told an enthusiastic crowd at the airport in Newington, N.H.

Romney then walked a few hundred yards across the tarmac to board his plane en route to Iowa, and on to Colorado. By the time he goes to sleep in his own bed Monday night, the Republican nominee will have touched down in eight battleground states, some of them multiple times.

During his first stop in Mentor, Ohio, Obama bounded onto a stage at the local high school, where 4,000 supporters had gathered. His voice was raspy and hoarse, a product, campaign aides said, of a busy campaign schedule combined with regular conference calls to officials dealing with the response to Hurricane Sandy.

The president warned that his rivals are counting on his supporters being "so worn down by all the squabbling and all the dysfunction, that you'll finally just give up and walk away and put them back in power."

"No!" the audience responded.

"That's what they're counting on," Obama continued. "In other words, their bet is on cynicism. But, Ohio, my bet is on you. And by the way, I don't feel cynical. I feel hopeful — because of you."

Obama visited four states Saturday and is set to travel to four more on Sunday and three on Monday, ending with a final rally in Des Moines, in the state that launched the onetime underdog to the presidency.

Obama's campaign, meanwhile, opened 5,100 "hyper-local offices" in living rooms, local stores and barbershops in battleground states to get "as close to individual voters as possible," according to campaign manager Jim Messina. Aides said volunteers would perform 700,000 shifts through Election Day.

In the Cleveland area, the Obama campaign distributed fliers noting that celebrity surrogates will stop by the key Cuyahoga County early voting site this weekend, including Vivica Fox, will.i.am, and Sophia Bush on Saturday, and John Legend, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Aisha Tyler on Sunday.

But it was former president Bill Clinton whom the campaign was counting on the most. With three rallies on Saturday in Virginia, including one that marked the first time he and Obama have been on the trail together, Clinton clocked in his 29th appearance for Obama since giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention. And he's set to do eight more, including appearing in Pennsylvania and North Carolina over the next two days — two states Obama has not visited since holding the convention in Charlotte, N.C. in early September.

"It doesn't take a poll to tell you that there is almost no one who can deliver a more compelling case about what it takes to manage the country through a challenging economic time and who is better suited to stand up for the middle class than President Clinton," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Clinton's appearances in states such as Minnesota and Pennsylvania — which Obama carried easily four years ago — showed that the Obama campaign had taken notice that Romney's side was making a late play in both states. And Obama's appearance in Wisconsin — he'll make another Monday — showed his concern about another state that he carried comfortably four years ago.

Romney has more than 60 surrogates, split into teams of three or four, fanning out across 11 battleground states this weekend.

While Romney has sought to appeal to moderate voters, many of his surrogates have offered red meat to the base. Introducing Romney in Dubuque, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa recalled mentioning Obama in front of his 3-year-old great-granddaughter and she said, "Grandpa, don't say that dirty word."

Friday night in West Chester, Ohio, where more than 40 Republican leaders joined Romney and running mate Rep. Paul Ryan on stage, many of the introductory speakers tore into Obama over his handling of the killing of American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested that if Romney was president, the attacks would have been avoided.

Romney's final campaign swing has been tinged with nostalgia. He is traveling with his wife, Ann, who had been keeping her own schedule, as well as a half-dozen advisers and intimates who have been at his side since he began his quest for the presidency five years ago.

As they boarded the plane in New Hampshire, Romney's advisers posed for pictures. And in Dubuque, where Romney made a grand entrance at an afternoon rally by descending the steps of his gleaming white and blue plane to the soundtrack of "Rudy," his strategists filmed the whole shebang on their iPhones, just for posterity.

"We've come a long way, you guys. We've been here a few times before right in this wonderful city," Romney told the crowd in Dubuque, where during the last campaign Ann once fell off a stage. ("I fell on da-butt in Dubuque," she likes to joke.)

"With great friends all around us, we've had some long days and some short nights, and we are almost there," Romney said.

iPhone 5 in India: A look at Airtel, Aircel

iPhone 5 in India: A look at Airtel, Aircel postpaid, prepaid plans

Like the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 5 is being offered by Airtel and Aircel. Keeping with the tradition, there are no subsidies on the Rs. 45,500 price tag, but both operators are offering a bunch of special plans to woo prospective customers.

Of course, you are not limited to buying an iPhone 5 from Airtel or Aircel - you can walk into one of the many electronic chains that are selling the iPhone 5 and pick up a unit, while sticking to your current plan. Since the iPhone 5 takes the new nano-SIM, you should check with if your current operator has nano-SIMs in stock or in worse case scenario, cut your regular/ micro-SIM into a nano-SIM - look up the Internet for instructions (caution advised).

Back to the operators. While Aircel is offering only a single postpaid plan (a very attractive one at that), Airtel has multiple postpaid options. Both operators have also shared multiple prepaid plans. It's worth noting that all iPhone 5 units being sold in the country (including the ones by Airtel and Aircel) are factory unlocked i.e. you are free to use it with any GSM operator anywhere in the world.

Airtel - Postpaid plans

plan name	Units	600	1000	1600	2000
all local min	Nos	500	900	1400	1500
all sms local + national	Nos	300	400	500	600
3G Data	MB	200	500	1200	3072
discount	Rs.	50%	50%	50%	50%
you pay	Rs.	300	500	800	1000

Airtel - Prepaid Plans 

Recharge Vouchers ->	Rs.290	Rs.490	Rs.790	Rs.990
Free Local Minutes (all networks)	500 min	900 min	1400 min	1500 min
Free SMS (Local / National)	300	400	500	600
Free 3G Data	200 MB	500 MB	1200 MB	3000 MB

Additional charges beyond free usage : Outgoing Calls 60p/min to any mobile Phone, 90/p min to all Landlines. SMS charges at 40p/SMS. Data usage at 3p/30KB.

Aircel - Prepaid Plans

With simple top up options starting at Rs 396, get upto 15 GB data usage on 3G and 2G, along with additional benefits on calling and SMSing.

Recharge	Rs. 396	Rs. 696	Rs. 996
Minutes	500 Minutes A2A* (Local + National Minutes)	1000 Minutes A2A* (Local + National Minutes)	1000 Minutes A2A* (Local + National Minutes)
SMS	1000 SMS A2A* (Local + National)	1500 SMS A2A* (Local + National)	2000 SMS A2A* (Local + National)
Data	3 GB Data 3G/2G	7GB Data 3G/2G	15GB Data 3G/2G
Validity	30 Days validity	30 Days validity	30 Days validity

 

*Aircel to Aircel

Aircel - Postpaid Plan

Pay nothing for the first 12 months and get up to 500 mins of calling, 500 SMS and 1GB data usage, absolutely free, per month.

	Plan benefits
Rental for first 12 months*	Rs.0
Free Minutes A2A** per month (Local & National)	500
Free Data (3G/2G) per month	1 GB
Free SMS A2A** per month (Local & National)	500

 

**Aircel to Aircel

 

* Post 12 months the rental would be Rs.399
After above free usage is over all local & STD calls will be charged at 1p/sec, SMS rates for local, national and international would be Rs.1, Rs.1.5 & Rs.5 respectively. Applicable data charges would be 10p/10kb.

India Queues Up for the iPhone 5

Apple Inc. AAPL -3.31% on Friday launched the iPhone 5 across India, creating a stir among the gadget freaks in the fastest growing wireless market in the world.

Bharti Airtel Ltd. 532454.BY -2.12%, one of Apple’s service-provider partners in India, held launch events in four major cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.

The iPhone 5 comes to India more than a month after Apple launched it in its major markets.

The iPhone has a tiny market share in India — less than 2% of all handset sales — because of its high cost. South Korean firm Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +2.31% has about a 50% market share.

But distributors of the iPhone 5 said sales in India appeared to be much swifter than for previous versions of the smartphone.

A spokesman for Bharti Airtel, who declined to be named, said the company saw a 78% spike in preorders for the iPhone 5, compared with the iPhone 4S. Bharti Airtel started taking preorders for the phone three days before the launch.

A spokesman for Apple in India wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Crowds swarmed — with wads of Indian rupees and credit cards — at an amphitheatre in the plush UB City mall located in the heart of Bangalore to pick up the smartphone.

Six makeshift counters in the mall together sold 600 iPhone 5s in the first hour of the launch.

The iPhone 5 is priced at 45,500 rupees ($846) for the basic 16-gigabyte version. The 32-gigabyte model is priced at 52,500 rupees and the 64- gigabyte version at 59,500 rupees.

“Whatever numbers we have is going to be sold out completely,” said Rohit Malhotra, the chief executive of Bharti Airtel in Karnataka state, pointing to the teeming crowd. “We didn’t even have a hundredth of this crowd” last year, he added.

Arjun Gupta, 23 years old and running a pharmaceutical distribution business in Mysore, said he travelled 140 kilometers to Bangalore to pick up his preordered phone on the first day of the sale.

Mr. Gupta, who had been waiting in the queue for more than an hour, feared the phone might have been sold out if he didn’t preorder one. Mr. Gupta said he owns most of Apple’s products that have been launched in India, but he skipped the iPhone 4 and 4S, to wait for upgraded versions.

Analysts expect the iPhone 5 to do swifter sales in India than previous incarnations, as the launch comes just a few days before the Hindu festival of Diwali, which will be celebrated in India on Nov. 13, when most Indians splurge on luxury products such as smartphones, gold jewelry, and autos.

Like Mr. Gupta, most buyers had preordered the phones from carriers such as Bharti Airtel and Aircel Ltd., and mobile phone retailers that until recently had to depend on the telecommunications carriers for supplies of the phones.

Until recently, Apple sold the iPhone through Indian telecom providers, which bundle the phones with data services. With sales of the phones remaining low, Apple recently tweaked its strategy by tying up with specialized distribution companies such as Ingram Micro Inc. IM -1.64% and Redington India Ltd. 532805.BY +0.73% The move is expected to help the company reach a wider audience, especially Indians who live in thousands of smaller towns.

“Until now, we had been selling iPhones that were routed through wireless operators,” said Satish Babu, founder and managing director of Chennai-based UniverCell that runs 450 outlets, mostly in southern India.

“Starting with the iPhone 5, we are selling models that don’t come locked in to a particular operator,” he said. According to Mr. Babu, there is a growing awareness of the Apple brand in India.

“Also, as the time difference between global and India launches have narrowed, consumers will prefer going to buy it legally from stores like ours than buy it from the grey market,” he said.

In the past, illegally imported iPhones have made their way into India’s electronics markets.

Apple iphone 5 finally comes to India

Apple iphone 5 finally comes to India

NEW DELHI: Apple has officially launched iPhone 5, its latest flagship smartphone, in India today at promotional events in New Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Steve Jobs, the legendary founder of Apple

Steve Jobs, the legendary founder of Apple, kept peace between the design and engineering teams of the world's most valued company. Executive infighting may signal that Apple's golden age is waning, analysts warn. In this picture, people attend the opening ceremony of an art exhibition in commemoration of Jobs on the occasion of his first death anniversary in Hanoi on October 5.(AFP)

US Presidential Race Back

US Presidential Race Back in Full Speed After Superstorm

With the American Election Day fast approaching, U.S. President Barack Obama resumes campaigning for re-election Thursday after spending several days heading the federal government's response to the Atlantic storm Sandy.

Mr. Obama will travel to the so-called “battleground states” of Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado, three states that could determine if he or Republican challenger Mitt Romney will gain the 270 electoral votes needed to win next Tuesday's election. The president suspended his campaigning Monday as Sandy devastated the coastal area of New Jersey and caused massive damage to New York City. Mr. Romney also spent several days rallying for donations for Sandy's victims.

Mr. Obama traveled to New Jersey Wednesday to get a first-hand look at the damage with Republican Governor Chris Christie, who praised the president's handling of the disaster, despite being a supporter of Mr. Romney.

Mr. Romney held a rally in Florida,Wednesday, his first official campaign event since Sandy made landfall, but avoided directly criticizing Mr. Obama.

The former Massachusetts governor will hold campaign rallies Thursday in Virginia, another crucial state.

The president and Mr. Romney are virtually tied nationally in recent voter opinion polls. But the Democratic incumbent holds a narrow lead in several of the battleground states.