Still perpetuating the horse race story with 3 days to go - BBC News this evening

After listening to my local football team crashing to defeat at home on the radio this afternoon (another two hours of my life I'm not going to get back), I settled down to watch the early evening news - the US elections was the first item, detailing the frantic itineraries of the candidates over the next 3 days.

The good news was that the race is now being described as "almost" neck and neck, with Obama "appearing" to be ahead in the swing states. But when it came to the footage of the latest rallies, Romney's was shown first, in magnificent wide shot and brilliant sunshine, of a rally with quite a big crowd, Romney, and the 100 representatives on stage who are supposed to be fanning out across the states over the weekend to help the campaign. Next came footage of an Obama rally, in a very, very tight shot, with no indication of the size of the venue and how many were there, looked like it was indoors and very dark. This isn't the first time this has happened in this campaign. Seemed very manipulative to me.

Next came interviews with two voters - a businessman who was going to vote for Romney, because "he's proved he can do well on a smaller scale before". Then, to my surprise, they interviewed another Republican (couldn't they find a Democrat?!), who was going to vote for Obama this time round , because "he was doing a good job".

I'd like to know if anyone can tell me if the Romney footage was from today or yesterday, as I thought his representatives were already supposed to out there on the ground.

I find it very odd that the BBC is doing this, because although they have election coverage this year as usual, it runs from midnight to 6 a.m., and will probably get 1m in the ratings at its peak, as the rival commercial station is also doing all-night live coverage for the first time in years - they're really not going to attract many more viewers through keeping up this facade of a close race.