John McCain faces a struggle to defeat Obama in November's poll [AFP]

The pair were both campaigning in the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania on Monday as McCain struggled to catch up with Obama's lead in the polls.

"After decades of broken politics in Washington, eight years of failed policies from [President] George Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that has taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are one week away from change in America," Obama said in Ohio.

The Illinois senator also criticised McCain on the November 4 election's key issue - the struggling US economy - but also appealed to voters to choose "hope over fear."

"In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need," he said.

Tax attack

Obama holds a five-point lead over McCain among likely US voters nationally in both a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby and in Gallup national opinion polls released on Monday.

However McCain said in Pennsylvania on Monday that electing the Illinois senator would leave a "dangerous threesome" of Democrats in charge of the US government, including Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the house of representatives, and Harry Reid, the US senate Democratic leader.

"This election comes down to how you want your hard-earned money spent," he said.

"Do you want to keep it and invest it in your future, or have it taken by the most liberal person to ever run for the presidency and the Democratic leaders who have been running congress for the past two years?"

McCain said his approach would be to cut spending and taxes to encourage people to invest in the stock markets or buy a home.

Obama's approach, he said, would increase spending and raise taxes to pay for it.

Obama is using his huge campaign resources and thousands of volunteers to pursue to press the Arizona senator in formerly safe Republican states such as Virginia and North Carolina.

That has forced McCain to campaign in a number of states that the Republicans won comfortably in 2004, a sign, many analysts say, that he may struggle to defeat Obama on November 4.

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