The Democratic presidential hopefuls are scouring New Hampshire for last-minute converts, with Mr Howard Dean questioning Mr John Kerry's judgement on Iraq and Mr Wesley Clark contrasting his modest roots to his rivals' privileged backgrounds.
On the day before the New Hampshire primary, a key step on the road to choosing a challenger to President George W Bush, the Democratic White House contenders searched for support in every cranny of a state where voters traditionally make their decisions late and favour the underdogs.
Mr Dean tried to mount a late rush to overcome Mr Kerry's lead in public opinion polls and resurrect his once high-flying campaign, criticising the Massachusetts senator for his vote in US Congress to authorise last year's military invasion to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
"Where was John Kerry when George Bush was handing out all this misinformation about Saddam had something to do with al Qaeda?" Mr Dean, the one-time front-runner who strongly opposed the Iraq war, asked at a town hall meeting in Nashua.
"He was voting in favour of the war and it turned out all the reasons the president gave us were not true," said Dean, a former governor of Vermont who disputed Kerry's claims to have more foreign policy experience.
"Washington is the only place where sitting on a committee qualifies as experience," Mr Dean told hundreds of supporters at a town hall meeting in Manchester.
Mr Clark, the retired general and former NATO commander who is facing a challenge for third place from North Carolina Senator John Edwards, emphasised his newcomer status in politics and contrasted his background with Dean and Kerry, products of wealth who attended Yale University.
"I grew up poor," Mr Clark, a native of Arkansas, said as he stood on a chair in a diner in Keene. "I didn't go to Yale, my parents couldn't have afforded it. I went to West Point."
Mr Clark launched a marathon bus tour of all 10 counties in the state yesterday, beginning before dawn at a truck stop in Claremont and winding up after midnight in the northern village of Dixville Notch, which traditionally casts the initial votes in the country's first primary.
A new Reuters/MSNBC/Zogbypoll showed Mr Kerry, the surprise winner in the Iowa caucuses a week ago, holding a narrowing three-point lead over Mr Dean on the eve of the primary. Mr Edwards and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman were pushing Mr Clark for third place.
Other media polls show a much wider lead for Mr Kerry, who used buses and a helicopter to crisscross the state in search of undecided voters. New Hampshire has a long tradition of late momentum shifts and startling upsets, and Mr Kerry said he was taking nothing for granted.