PHILADELPHIA - The type of trash talking usually reserved for football took up politics Sunday as Republicans and Democrats headed into the final hours of the presidential campaign in a last-ditch push to win battleground Pennsylvania.

From Scranton to Sewickley, in executive boardrooms and coffee shops, talk of Tuesday's presidential election turned up in the most unlikely places as both parties scrambled to win over undecided voters and get supporters to the polls. Even Eagles fans outside the Lincoln Financial Field staked out turf between President Bush or Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

"Only people here who support George Bush can eat my pork," said Republican tailgater Don Culp, of suburban Concord. He set up homemade Bush-Cheney signs in his parking lot pre-game feast for a pack of friends and fellow fans.

"You're not going to give me a pork sandwich?" Democrat and John Kerry supporter Steven Fox, 36, of West Whiteland asked in disbelief. "You know, this politics stuff is gonna go away in a week. If I can't have pork, that's going to go a long way."

Culp held firm.

"You can have a pork sandwich after Bush wins," he answered.

President Bush headlines the list of politicians flooding Pennsylvania today with a 9:30 a.m. rally in Washington County as he stops in five battleground states. On the Democratic side, vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards is scheduled to stop in Latrobe, while Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, will be in Scranton and Lancaster.

Other high-profile campaigners today include Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, both in Philadelphia; national Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe in Pittsburgh; and Republican Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich in Lancaster and York.

The fervor also is sweeping over down-ballot candidates watching to see how the presidential race will affect their own elections. Republican four-term U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, shaking hands outside the Eagles game, said he expects a record turnout - come rain or shine. Preliminary weather forecasts for Tuesday predict cloudy skies, with highs in the low 60s.

"I think the turnout's going to be very heavy," said Specter, who will hit seven of the state's major cities today on a campaign fly-around. "This is as hotly contested a presidential election that I think the country has ever had, and it's neck and neck all over."

But his Democratic opponent, Rep. Joe Hoeffel, predicted that a high turnout will help his own chances.

"I believe Democrats are coming home," said Hoeffel, stumping in Philadelphia's Italian Market during a no-sleep, 41-hour campaign marathon that will take him to Pittsburgh and suburban counties today. "And I'm looking forward to a Democratic victory."

Pennsylvania registered more than a half-million new voters over the last six months, including 260,000 Democrats and 155,000 Republicans.

Staunch Bush supporter Barbara Yanchek, 56, said the race feels too close to call among her friends and neighbors in Jermyn, Pa., near Scranton.

"We don't know how this area's going to vote," Yanchek, a Republican, said in an interview last week. "I think it's split down the middle. I see a lot of Democrats going for Bush, but this is Casey country," she said, referring to former Democratic Gov. Bob Casey, who hailed from northeastern Pennsylvania. "They go in the voting booth and pull the 'D' lever."

For other voters, picking between the two candidates comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils.

"Kerry - he's OK, he's not like somebody I really, really want to vote for," said Charles Mickens, 19, a freshman at Lock Haven University, deep in Pennsylvania's conservative territory. "Since Bush has been in politics, so far I've seen 9/11, I've seen a war happen, I've seen oil prices go up. All of these issues happen when Bush was here, and with another four years, I'm like, 'What else is gonna happen?'"

Both sides also are gearing up for postelection legal hijinks. More than 2,500 elections attorneys from both parties will be monitoring polling precincts across the state Tuesday. Already, state Republicans have filed a lawsuit seeking more time for military voters to have their returning overseas ballots be counted. GOP officials are threatening legal action to challenge the validity of all absentee ballots originating from prisons and jails.

Countering, Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., said Sunday that too-aggressive poll watchers could face legal sanctions if they intimidate minority voters - who generally support Democratic candidates.

"When we have Americans of every background fighting to spread freedom around the world, it is un-American to harass or intimidate people who are exercising those freedoms here at home," Fattah said. "If we need personal legal liability to drive that point home, we will have it."