Less than one week before key US elections, President Barack Obama courted young voters Wednesday with an unorthodox appeal from the set of the popular "Daily Show" satirical television show.
Obama was to become the first sitting president to appear on the program hosted by Jon Stewart, whose nightly skewerings of political hypocrisy and US media shortcomings have made him a star, notably with young Democrats.
With the party fearing a rout at the hands of fired-up Republicans in the November 2 elections, including the loss of at least the House of Representatives, the White House described the outreach as no laughing matter.
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"I think obviously you've got a constituency of younger voters that watch that show, and it's a good place to go and reach them," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday.
"The president hasn't been shy about going to the places where people are getting their information and trying to make his case. And I think that's what he'll do on the show," said Gibbs.
Word of the appearance came as new polls let downcast Democrats breathe a small sigh of relief, notably surveys showing the party's candidates in California holding healthy leads over their well-funded Republican rivals.
Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer enjoyed a 52-43 percent edge over former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina in a public opinion poll conducted by Suffolk University.
And in the race to succeed outgoing Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Jerry Brown held a 50-42 lead over former eBay boss Meg Whitman, who has spent a staggering 141.6 million dollars of her own money on the race. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus four percentage points.
Fiorina was hospitalized Tuesday with an infection stemming from reconstructive surgery after breast cancer, her office said, and hoped to be back on the campaign trail soon.
Other polls likewise gave Boxer and Brown leads over their rivals, while a range of surveys in nail-biter races in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada found statistical dead heats that suggested Democrats might hold the Senate.
But in the battle for control of the House of Representatives, at least one respected political analyst, Charlie Cook, said Republicans would easily grab the 39 seats they need to recapture the chamber and could gain 48-60 spots.
"There's always a chance" Democrats could cling to control by one or two seats, he allowed on MSNBC television, but "I'll be sacking groceries" if that actually happens.
Obama planned an 11th-hour blitz through key battlegrounds leading to Tuesday's vote, as Democratic former president Bill Clinton told ABC television "it will be a great mistake to count us out."
"If we want it bad enough to go out there and work for it, I think we'll get it," Clinton said in Chicago, where he lent his political muscle to Democratic senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias's efforts to win Obama's old seat.
"This is the largest number of close races I've ever seen across America. I've never seen it like this," Clinton, who has held scores of campaign events for Democrats across the country, said Tuesday.
All 435 House of Representatives seats, 37 of 100 Senate seats, and 37 governorships are up for grabs in the election, which came amid stubbornly high unemployment of nearly 10 percent.
Historically, a sitting US president's party loses seats in his first mid-term elections, though such contests have not been good predictors of chances for a second term.
Taking control of even one chamber of Congress would give Republicans broad control over the legislative agenda in Washington and new power to investigate the Obama administration and probe government programs.
Winning over governorships and state legislatures would give Republicans an edge in once-per-decade re-drawing of political maps, a process often bent to partisan aims in a bid to maximize a party's presence in Congress.
