Surrogates for President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney projected outward confidence on Sunday in each candidate's ability to win on Election Day.

As the final NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll showed a close race nationally between the two candidates, their top supporters squabbled over who held the upper hand in critical battleground states.

"I'm very confident that, two days out from Election Day, the president's going to be re-elected on Tuesday night," said David Plouffe, a White House adviser who managed the president's 2008 campaign, on "Meet the Press."

There are seven states, worth 89 electoral votes, considered true "toss-up" states on NBC News' battleground map: Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, Florida and New Hampshire. Other competitive states include Nevada, which has leaned slightly for Obama in recent polls, and North Carolina, which has tended toward Romney in many recent polls.

"All these states right now, we think the president's in a good position to win," Plouffe said.

Both Obama and Romney spent Saturday barnstorming these battleground states in hope of shoring up their base and shaking loose prized undecided voters in the final hours of the campaign. But their professed confidence belied a much more competitive battle for the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency, especially as an uncertain finale loomed over the 2012 campaign.

The Romney campaign said its Sunday schedule — which took the former Massachusetts governor to Pennsylvania and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to Minnesota — both states which Republicans have only contested as of late — was a sign of surging national momentum. But Democrats castigated those trips as a sign of desperation, as Romney scrambled for new pathways to 270.

One of the most hotly contested battleground states includes Virginia, which Obama has put into play in 2008 and again in 2012. It also has one of the earliest poll closing times in the nation on Tuesday, and could offer political observers an early indicator of the trend lines in the election.

"We're going to win this state, and I think we're going to win it a lot bigger than people are predicting," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican who represents a Richmond-area district.

He added: "I see here on the ground, there is a lot of enthusiasm for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan."

But political bravado is a well-worn tradition for the closing days of the elections, and Plouffe was quick to seize upon Romney's plans to spend some of his final campaign stops in Virginia and Florida, two states he might not be able to afford losing come Tuesday night.

"We think Gov. Romney's playing defense," the White House aide said of Virginia and Florida. "I'd rather be the president today than Gov. Romney in terms of those two states."

Plouffe also characterized the Obama campaign's position in Iowa and Ohio — two footholds of the president's Midwestern "firewall" — as "commanding," though he cautioned the campaign must execute its get-out-the-vote efforts on Tuesday if it is to secure those states.

Follow the final weekend of the campaign with NBC Politics:

• NBC/WSJ poll: Obama 48, Romney 47
• Clinton joins Obama for rally capping whirlwind day
• Uncertain finale looms amid weekend campaign blitz
• Romney implores Colorado for 'one last push'
• Biden zings Romney in Colorado
• Ryan travels to Pennsylvania, trying to put state in play
• Obama plays up 'trust' in battleground Ohio
• Obama aide explains 'voting is best revenge' comment
• Ryan: 'We believe in change and hope'
• Romney strikes optimistic tone as final weekend opens
• Polls: Obama stays ahead in Ohio, deadlocked with Romney in Fla.
• GOP's chances at Senate imperiled by self-inflicted wounds

Updated at 9:16 p.m. ET: An impending hurricane injected a new degree of uncertainty into the 2012 presidential campaign, impacting candidates' schedules and early voting opportunities just nine days before Election Day.

President Barack Obama called the storm "serious and big" following a briefing at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA), warning residents in the storm's path "to take this very seriously."

The president also canceled campaign trips to Virginia and Colorado scheduled for early this week, the last full week of campaigning this election, in order to monitor Hurricane Sandy. The storm's impending landfall was poised to add a new variable to a presidential contest that has tightened considerably in its closing days, along with scores of downballot races up and down the East Coast.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney canceled planned stops in Virginia — one of the most hotly-contested battleground states this fall — on Sunday and headed to Ohio instead. 

Obama spent Sunday in Washington, where he traveled to FEMA headquarters following church services early this afternoon. The administration authorized several emergency declarations for states sitting in Sandy's path, and Obama convened a conference call with administration officials and governors in the storm's path to receive an update on preparations.

The storm put some of Obama's campaigning on hold, as he canceled a northern Virginia event for that afternoon, along with an event in Colorado Springs on Tuesday. Obama was still set, though, to travel to Youngtown, Ohio on Monday morning. The president appears — for now — intent upon returning to the campaign trail on Tuesday evening in Green Bay, Wis. His campaign also advised on Sunday afternoon that two stops on Wednesday in Ohio would go forward.

The storm might have rearranged Romney's own campaign itinerary, though it's unclear whether the GOP presidential hopeful will be able to return to Virginia soon. Romney didn't address the storm in his remarks in Celine, Ohio, but his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, urged voters in the Buckeye State to keep East Coasters in their thoughts and prayers.

Nonetheless, the hurricane could prove to be the proverbial "October Surprise" of this campaign as it upended other elements of the election well before it had even made landfall.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) canceled early voting in his state for Monday, a decision other east coast governors could mirror. That could have an especially pronounced impact on a state like Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election and home to a competitive Senate race.

Late Sunday, Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed an executive order to extend in-person voter registration in Connecticut to Thursday, Nov. 1. The deadline had originally been Tuesday.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, said on Sunday's TODAY show that he didn't worry about power outages or other complications from the storm diminishing voting in the state.

"It's going to be, probably, seven days from the time the storm passes 'til Election Day," he said. "We've already taken precautions to move up polling places to a higher spot for restoration. The power companies are well aware of that. So I don't think it's going to interfere with voting."

But Democrats are counting on robust turnout — both through early voting and on Nov. 6 — to propel Obama to a second term. While Sandy's projected path is uncertain, its rain and wind could discourage voters in the key swing state of Ohio from voting early, a practice employed by both campaigns to bank votes ahead of Election Day.

"Obviously we want unfettered access to the polls, because we believe that the more people come out, the better we’re going to do,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama's re-election campaign, said Sunday on CNN. “And so, to the extent that it makes it harder, that’s a source of concern.”

The president himself downplayed worries about the storm's impact on voting. 

"We don't anticipate that at this point but we're obviously going to have to take a look," he said in Washington following his FEMA briefing.

The Supreme Court has refused to issue an order that would have cut back on early voting in Ohio.

 Related: Courts have yet to resolve Ohio election fights

The state asked the court to block lower court orders that directed the state to let individual counties decide if they want to permit early voting on the weekend and the Monday before the general election for all registered voters. The state wanted to permit it only for members of the U.S. military.

In a brief, one sentence order, the court said the application for a stay was addressed to Justice Elena Kagan, the circuit justice for that part of the country. She followed the usual practice of referring it to the full court, which then declined to take up the case.

Still assessing the lessons of its crushing defeat in last week’s Wisconsin recall election, the AFL-CIO labor confederation partnered with minority and youth organizations Tuesday to launch a new effort in six battleground states to register and mobilize voters and to battle any legal impediments to voting.

The six target states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Nevada.

With support from organized labor and minority voters, President Obama carried all six of those states in 2008.

Two of them – Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – have enacted strict voter identification requirements but Wisconsin's law is being litigated and may not be in effect in November.

The Wisconsin voter ID requirement was suspended for last week’s recall election.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker refused to tell reporters how much the labor confederation will spend on the voter effort but said, “We are putting every resource we have available and that means our human resource, which is the most valuable resource we have, behind this effort … We will have millions of people out there on the ground active participating in this process to ensure that voters are educated about what their rights are … and have what they need to have relative to voter ID.”

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She said union lawyers will help train polling place monitors who will serve as poll workers in some precincts. “We will be joining with others in (law)suits if necessary to make sure we can protect the right of people to vote…. This is a seamless kind of effort,” Holt Baker said.

The other groups joining the AFL-CIO are the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza and a coalition of progressive youth groups called Generational Alliance.

Andy Manis / Getty Images

Voters cast their ballots in a recall election for the governor and lieutenant governor at the Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center June 5, 2012 in Madison, Wisconsin.

When asked whether AFL-CIO strategists had done precinct-by-precinct analysis to see why labor failed in its effort to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker last week – with Walker winning nearly 68,000 more voters than he did when he ran in 2010 – Holt Baker replied, “Some of the analysis is still being done,” but she said there was anecdotal evidence that some voters in Milwaukee were unable to vote due to lack of poll workers in some places.

“Don’t be fooled by Wisconsin,” she said, instead labor will learn from Ohio where it succeeded in a referendum in blocking a law restricting labor union rights.

“We hit our targets” last week in Wisconsin, said Mike Podhorzer, the AFL-CIO political director, but Walker’s allies outperformed organized labor in turning out Walker voters – “more than people expected ahead of time.”

One lesson Podhorzer cited in the Walker victory: “They spent a lot of money on mail in addition to TV. There have been reports in the media about (Walker allies) putting up large phone banks; they invested in belts and suspenders. They decided this was a race they couldn’t afford to lose.”

Podhorzer added that “we still don’t know who actually voted” since the voter file data won’t be available until July.