Recent statewide polls in Michigan place President Barack Obama leading his Republican opponent Mitt Romney by an average of 3.8 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics.

Both the Romney and Obama campaigns previously regarded Michigan as a need-to-win state, and campaign affiliates have launched new ad campaigns in the home stretch of the election.

If Obama does win the state’s popular vote, he will receive all 16 of Michigan’s electors, pushing him closer to the required 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

But the Romney campaign is continuing to target the state, as Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan paid a visit to Oakland University last month.

Two of Romney’s sons also are scheduled to attend rallies in Grand Rapids, Detroit and Flint on Monday, according to The Detroit News.

Elsewhere in the state, candidates are making last-ditch canvassing efforts to publicize their positions before Tuesday, and the MSU community is preparing for the polls to open at 7 a.m.

Prepping the polls
As election day nears, the East Lansing City Clerk’s office’s workload grows exponentially as behind-the-scenes employees prepare to process thousands of votes.

City Clerk Marie McKenna said the city has been working for months to prepare for the election, and the work will continue days after polls are closed.

The days leading up to the election involve waking up before the sun rises to fill moving vans with polling devices and bags of ballots for each precinct in preparation for large voting numbers.

East Lansing typically has a higher voter turnout than other cities in Michigan, coming in around 70 percent, she said.

“It’s a historic election, and I think the local elections will also help drive voter turnout,” McKenna said.

Since East Lansing is a college town, McKenna said much of the election day preparations involve registering first-time student voters, as well as students who moved to East Lansing, to vote before the Oct. 9 deadline.

This year, roughly 3,000 students were registered, a process that is helped by on-campus groups and campaigns, but has to go through the city.

For sociology graduate student Jessica Bell, doing research on the candidates is a major step before going to the polls on Tuesday.

“That’s very important,” Bell said. “My work is all about working (with) and understanding climate change, and I need to know who plans to address it.”

The entire process begins months in advance and starts to pick up once the large shipment of absentee voter ballots are sent out in late September to East Lansing residents unable to make it to the polls.

McKenna also said registering voters continues for months.

“We have a very lengthy checklist,” McKenna said “Things start ramping up when we get our huge order of ballots.”

State and national elections
In the race for the 69th district state House seat, Democrat Sam Singh said although he is focusing most of his efforts on his own race — for which he is the likely winner — he also plans to help publicize other Democrats’ races and his views on the statewide ballot proposals.

Singh’s opponent, Republican Susan McGillicuddy, could not be reached for this story, but she has said in the past that she still will be working as the Meridian Township supervisor and likely will not be able to spend much extra time campaigning.

“We are excited about election day coming,” Singh said. “We’re confident in the plan that we’ve developed.”

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra and current U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., are on a last-minute blitz across the state on the eve of the election.

Stabenow — who leads Hoekstra by an average of 13 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics — is “crisscrossing” the state in the days before the election, visiting communities and campuses.

She will be at the rock on Farm Lane at noon today for a rally for Democratic candidates in the state.

But Hoekstra is not deterred by his underdog status.

He said this election could repeat his first run for public office in 1992, in which voters and the media counted him out until his opponent ended up conceding the victory.

And no matter what happens Tuesday, Hoekstra said he will put his whole focus into whatever comes next.

“Once a door opens and another one closes, you go back and assess what your options are,” Hoekstra said. “But we will wake up Wednesday morning no matter what happens feeling good about what comes ahead.”

East Lansing 54B District Court
Candidates state Rep. Mark Meadows and attorney Andrea Larkin also are focusing on face-to-face communication with the voters in the final days before the election.

“I’m doing more canvassing,” Larkin said. “That’s what I’m doing every day and every night. … It’s the single most important thing I can do as a candidate.”

Meadows said talking to voters is of the utmost importance during the entire campaign, especially in the final stretch.

“It’s all about sweat, knocking on doors and interacting with people,” Meadows said.

MSU Board of Trustees
Registered voters in Michigan also will determine whether incumbents keep two spots on the MSU Board of Trustees.

The board, which consists of eight trustees, is MSU’s governing body and votes on issues such as MSU’s budget, tuition and construction projects.

Democrat Joel Ferguson and Republican Melanie Foster — the board’s current chairman and vice-chairperson — will be up against challengers Democrat Brian Mosallam and Republican Jeff Sakwa for the two spots.

Foster and Sakwa said they are participating in the Michigan Republican Party’s bus tour: Believe in Michigan — Jobs First.

Sakwa said he plans to be on the bus tour Monday as it makes stops across Michigan, but said he will be a guest on radio shows to gain some extra publicity.

Mosallam said he has been boosting his last-minute preparations by having a team of about 30 people make phone calls on his behalf and send mass emails to publicize his candidacy.

Ferguson, who has been on the Board of Trustees since 1986, said in a previous State News article big challenges lie ahead for whoever wins election to the board.

“(We need to) keep lobbying (the Legislature) in making higher education a priority, and (give MSU an equal) share of appropriation,” Ferguson said.

Staff writers Derek Blalock, Lilly Keyes and Rachel Jackson contributed to this report.