24 hours to go

Less than twenty four hours from now, voters in the tiny town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire will gather in the local Balsams Grand Resort Hotel to cast the first ballots in the 2008 presidential election.

A few minutes after midnight, we will know the results of the first ballots counted in the election.

(Spoiler alert: The town has voted Republican in every election since 1972.)

Hours later, the polls will open in states across the country as a huge expected turnout of possibly 140 million people could cast their ballots in what could be the most historic election of their lives.

We are just hours away from electing a new president of the United States and the candidates, their surrogates and their campaign staffs are burning the midnight oil, leaving no stone unturned, or racing down to the wire. Choose your cliché, but it's all coming to an end tomorrow. 

A presidential campaign that began 22 months ago is finally drawing to a close. After a billion dollars in cash, millions of donations made, thousands of hands shaken, hundreds of babies kissed, scores of campaign commercials aired, and dozens of debates held, the longest and most expensive election in history is about to be just that -- history.

The polls show Democratic Senator Barack Obama holding his lead in the final days of the campaign but his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, is claiming the momentum on his side in his self-described underdog bid for the White House.

In the end, it will come down to 14 states that the 4 principals (Obama, McCain, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden) will visit in a dizzying frenzy of last minute travel in just 24 hours. McCain will campaign in seven different cities in seven states, including Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona, according to a report from Time magazine. Meanwhile, Palin will stump in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

The Democrats will also be criss-crossing the country, but five of the six states in which they will be campaigning are red states that voted for Bush in 2004. Obama will make a push for Florida, North Carolina and Virginia while Biden will campaign in Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the state where he grew up. Meanwhile, Michelle Obama will be on the stump in Colorado and Nevada. And there may be a last minute surprise stop added to the itinerary.

But it doesn't stop with the on-the-ground campaign visits. Senators Obama and McCain will both be interviewed during the half time show on "Monday Night Football" on ESPN and Cindy McCain will be a guest on CNN's "Larry King Live."

It won't be easy to avoid the campaign but it will be over tomorrow. We've heard from the candidates, the surrogates, the pollsters, the pundits, the focus groups, and from Joe the nation's newly most famous plumber. Soon we will hear from the voters.