Across the Pond: what do the polls tell us?

In the five days since an Irish bookmaker declared the US presidential race “well and truly over” – paying out more than $1 million to those who had bet on Barack Obama – there has been little to suggest that Paddy Power was taking a gamble.

The Democratic nominee has spoken in front of excited crowds of 100,000 in St Louis and 75,000 in Kansas City, announced that he had raised $150 million (£88 million) last month, and received an endorsement from Colin Powell, a Republican statesman, that should help to assuage lingering concerns about his national security credentials.

Yet on the RealClearPolitics website the average of some volatile recent polls showed John McCain trailing by only 4.8 per cent and he remains in touching distance of his opponent across some of the battleground states in which this election will be decided.

Mr Obama cautioned supporters against complacency. “The race will tighten because that’s just what happens,” he told an TV interviewer.

At a fundraiser last week, he said: “For those of you who are feeling giddy, or cocky, or think this is all set, I just have two words for you: New Hampshire. I’ve been in these positions before, when we were favoured and the press starts getting carried away, and we end up getting spanked.”

Mr Obama led polls by nine points in New Hampshire before losing the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton. On that same January night this year, Mr McCain also won the Granite State, the start of a comeback that led to him winning his party’s presidential nomination.

The Republican relishes playing the underdog once again, telling rallies that while Mr Obama may be measuring the curtains for the White House: “We’ve got them just where we want them!” And, after several weeks in which his campaign has floundered in the face of the financial crisis Mr McCain has started to deliver a more disciplined message.

At rallies he repeatedly invoked Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbacher’s objections to Mr Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around”, suggesting that such tax plans were akin to socialism. In St Charles, Missouri, Mr McCain said that his rival was “more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is growing the pie”.

Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist for Mr McCain, invoked the Democratic campaign’s vast spending power and the role of a liberal press, saying: “The American people reject the idea that you can buy the presidency, and I also believe they reject the idea that the national media decides who wins. People get to vote in this country.”

The problem is that in Ohio, where Mr Wurzelbacher lives, a new poll showed Mr Obama leading by nine points. Although six per cent said that the tale of the plumber made them more likely to vote for Mr McCain, four per cent – presumably a previously unsuspected sect of socialists – said that it had motivated them to vote for the Democrat.

Rick Davis, the campaign manager, for the Republican, has said he might reconsider a self-denying ordinance stopping Mr McCain from stoking the racially-tinged controversy over Mr Obama’s former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright. Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani, two former Republican rivals for the nomination, said the Democrat’s past drug use should be scrutinised.

They are not the only ones playing hardball. John Kerry, the previous Democratic nominee, yesterday made a nasty joke about the 72-year-old Mr McCain wearing incontinence pads.

But it has been Mr McCain’s old friends, including Mr Powell, who have been shaking their heads sorrowfully over a campaign that has employed – with little effect – the “low-road” tactics that Mr McCain once decried. “He has sacrificed everything that once made him special,” said one.

Even Sarah Palin, whose prides herself on a pitbull-with-lipstick approach to politics, criticised the use of automated telephone “robocalls” that have been inundating voters. Mr Obama responded by saying: “You really have to work hard to violate Governor Palin’s standards on negative campaigning.”

Some Republicans hope privately that the poll lead of Mr Obama is inflated as they clutch at the straws offered by the “Bradley effect”, a somewhat mythological phenomenon named after Tom Bradley, a black Democratic politician who lost the California governorship 26 years ago despite leading polls in which respondents were allegedly too embarrassed to admit their racism.

Others suspected, however, that surveys were underestimating the lead of Mr Obama because they did not take proper account of an expected surge in voter turnout from young people and African-Americans mobilised by the Democrats.

Mr Obama’s campaign has also out-spent Mr McCain on television advertising. This week attention was given to urging supporters to vote early in states including Florida, where the Democratic nominee started a three-day swing.

Mr McCain, in contrast, is spending most of his time defending territory such as Missouri, where he spent yesterday. His narrow path to victory meant that he must win almost all the states that President Bush took four years ago.

At a huge outdoor rally in Orlando, Florida last night, Mr Obama appeared on stage with Hillary Clinton, the first time they have campaigned together since June.

They walked toward the podium arm-in-arm, smiling and waving, before Mrs Clinton issued a full throated battle cry for the man who defeated her in their bitterly contested and marathon primary contest.

"Tell your friends, tell your neighbours: Hillary sent you to vote for Barack Obama!" The former First Lady said.

Referring to their disputed Florida primary contest, where Mrs Clinton garnered significantly more votes, she told the crowd: "I'm asking you to work as hard for Barack as you worked for me."

Mr Obama then lavised praise on his former opponent, declaring: "I am proud to call her my friend."

The state of Florida’s Republican party is not betting every last penny on Mr McCain winning. On Saturday party officials announced that they expected to carry over at least $2 million into 2009 rather than spend all of their funds on this presidential election.

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