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Reagan's five-day, eleven-state, 16-city tour had obviously been mapped out in the belief that his re-election was a certainty and a 50-state sweep highly possible. Reagan invaded Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, where he would never have gone at the end of a campaign that looked at all close; he could have won easily without them, but hoped to deny Mondale the electoral votes of the few states that the Democrat seemed to have a chance of carrying. The President even added a brief, unscheduled foray into Mondale's Minnesota just to demonstrate, as he put it, that "we have never written off any state." Crowds wherever he went got the point; they took to chanting, "Fifty states!"
Everywhere, Reagan urged his listeners to vote on Election Day. As he put it to a crowd of 10,000 in the War Memorial Arena in Rochester: "The polls are scaring me to death because I have a feeling that maybe some people are looking at them and saying, 'Oh, we don't have to go and vote. It's all over.' Well, President Dewey told me to tell you that isn't true." The crowd answered with shouts of "Four more years!" At every stop Reagan also worked in a plug for Republican senatorial and congressional candidates.
En route to California for the last day of the campaign, Reagan got a briefing from Pollster Richard Wirthlin, who illustrated the latest survey results with a colored map. States were tinted to show not who was leading but the size of the President's margin: blue for 20 points or more (25 states); red for 10 to 20 points (21 states); green for 5 to 10 points (four states); orange for fewer than 5 (one state, Iowa). Only Minnesota was left white to indicate no lead—and even there, Wirthlin's polls showed the President and Mondale neck and neck. As it turned out, Wirthlin's map was remarkably prescient. After his briefing from the pollster, the President played Trivial Pursuit with aides. His fabled luck held to the end: he drew one question asking who said, "I am the Errol Flynn of B movies." Reagan replied correctly, "I did."
The campaign finale was a rally Monday night in the same San Diego shopping mall in which Reagan closed his 1980 drive. It was a Reagan classic. The President's speech was laced with lines from his past orations, barbs at Mondale, patriotic uplift. As he finished, fireworks erupted, skydivers using parasails descended, thousands of red, white and blue balloons rose to meet them.
Mondale, in contrast, appeared in the last few days to be a campaigner who was trying merely to make the result respectable. At a Monday rally in downtown Los Angeles, he unashamedly asked the crowd of 10,000 to help him avoid a shutout. Said Mondale: "Either we will make history or they will make history. Mr. Reagan understands that. That's why he is calling for a clean sweep. Now if they make history, they'll claim a historic mandate. So before you vote, just pause a moment and think about it." On Monday, he flew to St. Paul to await what his staff knew would be grim news.