President Barack Obama planned to travel to Florida Sunday for a campaign stop as Hurricane Sandy, bearing down on the eastern seaboard, forced the White House candidates to review their schedules.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney has also canceled appearances in Virginia to head for Ohio before the hurricane's arrival.

Florida is one of a handful of states where early voting got underway. The president also has canceled two campaign events in Virginia and Colorado early next week to monitor developments related to Sandy.

Sandy, which forecasters said could prove to be the most devastating storm in decades, currently is a category one hurricane, with the potential to bring its heavy rains and gusting winds when it makes landfall early Tuesday, anywhere from Virginia to New Jersey.

Forecasters predict the hurricane will collide with a seasonal "nor'easter," creating a supercharged, cold weather system that could burst through the Mid-Atlantic states as far inland as Ohio, in the all important final week before the November 6 election.

The outcome of the vote is expected to hinge on a handful of battleground states where the two contenders also, for the most part, are running within a few percentage points of each other in the polls.

The start of early voting Saturday in the states of Florida, Maryland, and Washington, DC brought long lines of voters who in some cases wrapped around city blocks.

So far, at least 11 million people have already cast their ballots in states where early voting is underway, according to a tally by experts at George Mason University near Washington.

Both the Romney and Obama campaign received a boost Saturday from coveted newspaper endorsements as the race winds down.

The New York Times "enthusiastically" endorsed President Obama because, among other things, he has achieved the most sweeping health care reforms since 1965, prevented another Great Depression and ended the war in Iraq.

The Des Moines Register in the narrowly fought state of Iowa, one of the most important states to the quadrennial presidential contest, said Romney was better qualified to get the stagnant US economy moving again.

Separately, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leaving the door open to continuing to serve under Obama should he win a second term. Clinton has repeatedly insisted she would leave her office at the end of the Obama 's first term.

But she hinted at serving beyond then in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Thursday. "A lot of people have talked to me about staying," Clinton said.

AFP