They include the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, a key state, which has backed the Republican candidate in every election since 1968.

Mr Bush has won over just six papers that backed Al Gore in 2000. They include the Denver Post, which received 700 letters of protest.

Overall Mr Kerry has won the endorsements of 142 newspapers with a combined circulation of 17.5 million to 123 with an 11.5 million circulation for Mr Bush.

There is one bright spot for the President for Mr Bush: he has won the support of the Germany’s bestselling Bild newspaper. It is the first time a German newspaper has ever endorsed an American presidential candidate.

A LITTLE Hallowe’en humour was injected into a rally in California by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who will campaign for Mr Bush in Ohio on Friday.

“My kids just brought home a beautiful pumpkin, but you know what? I’m going to return it because it’s a Democratic pumpkin,” the state governor said.

Poking fun at a campaign appearance by Mr Kerry, in which the Massachusetts senator appeared to have overdone the tanning lotion, he said: “It has the orange colour of John Kerry’s tan, and the roundness of Teddy Kennedy.”

The Austrian-born bodybuilder is married to a member of the Kennedy clan, Maria Shriver, a niece of Edward Kennedy, the more rotund of the two Massachusetts senators.

Mr Schwarzenegger later said he liked to make jokes about his wife’s uncle.

“I think it’s always fun to do that. He’s one of my favourite relatives. He comes to my house and he eats away all the cake and all the desserts that we have.”

FIVE days before the election, the Bush campaign unveiled its most emotional ad yet. It shows Mr Bush declaring, “I’ve learnt first-hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision.

“I’ve held the children of the fallen who are told their dad or mom is a hero but would rather just have their mom or dad . . . I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes.” The Kerry campaign’s final volley of ads said they would counter Mr Bush’s “message of fear”.

AMNESTY International laid into Mr Bush over his conduct of the War on Terror. It accused him of creating an “iconography of torture, cruelty and degradation”, adding:

“The war mentality the Government has adopted has not been matched with a commitment to the laws of war and it has discarded . . . human rights principles along the way.”

BUMPER STICKERS:

“Don’t change horsemen in the middle of an apocalypse”

“Kerry. For and Against Everything.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“John Kerry and rural Virginia: sort of like caviar and pork rinds. Some things just don’t go together”
— Jerry Kilgore, President Bush’s campaign chairman in Virginia

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