McCain predicted a win at Wednesday’s debate.

(CNN) — John McCain predicted Sunday he would beat Barack Obama at the final presidential debate this week.

"After I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going out 24/7," the Republican nominee told volunteers at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, sparking laughter and applause from the group. McCain immediately added: "I want to emphasize again, I respect Senator Obama. We will conduct a respectful race, and we will make sure that everybody else does, too."

Outside the doors of his campaign offices, McCain is fighting to hold on to the traditionally-red state. McCain talked Sunday about the tough fight for Virginia, where Obama currently leads by four points, 49 to 45, in the state's most recent CNN poll of polls. He also pointed to battlegrounds states like Ohio — which Sarah Palin visited Sunday — and Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
"And I'm telling you, we're coming on and we're going to work 24/7 for the next — who's counting — 22 days," he said.

McCain acknowledged the dip in his poll numbers since the financial crisis began, but said overall trends were in his favor. "…I'd like to give you a little straight talk, we're a couple points down, ok,
nationally, but we're right in this game," he said. "The economy has hurt us a little bit in the last week or two, but in the last few days we've seen it come back up because they want experience, and they want knowledge and they want vision. And we'll give that to America, and I know that we're going to win this race."