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Obama on a roll

Barack Obama, the odds-on favourite in the 2008 U.S. presidential race, is in an unbeatable position, to go by a plethora of opinion polls. The latest average of serious polls (given by a handy website, www.realclearpolitics.com) reveals that, with fewer than 100 hours to go for the real thing, Mr. Obama leads John McCain by 6 percentage points. The latest CBS News/New York Times poll gives the Democrat a 11-point lead in a head-to-head matchup, with the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin turning the Republican campaign into a lost cause. The polls indicate that every State that voted blue in 2000 and 2004 has stayed solidly blue in 2008. With the pattern unlikely to change, Mr. Obama can bank 220-plus of the 270 electoral college seats needed for victory. In addition, seven States totalling 100 electoral college votes are leaning towards him, with larger than margin-of-error leads in five of them. Surveys that assess sentiments of different demographic segments are just as encouraging. The Democratic candidate is on a par with the Republican even among white voters and leads, of course, in every other segment. The data suggest that the Democrats can go on the offensive in Red States and easily fall back to defend their home bases, if necessary. The Republicans, by contrast, have more or less wound up their campaign in the Blue States and are trying to battle the tide in a handful of swing States.

Mr. Obama continues to display the level-headedness and controlled confidence that has been the distinctive feature of his campaign style. He has warned his supporters against complacency — even though the polls suggest that race will not be the negative factor it was initially feared to be, and that the majority of Americans are willing to make history by electing the nation’s first African-American President. The other concern in the Obama camp was the crazy quilt pattern of the U. S. electoral processes in which each county frames its own rules. Mindful of the 2000 outcome in Florida, the Democrats have set up a huge network of lawyers to counter Republican challenges to voter registration. The most impressive feature of the Obama campaign, apart from the candidate’s strong and charismatic leadership, is the grass-roots organisation. A good part of the $600 million-plus that the Democrat collected has come from small donations; what is more, he has an army of volunteers ready to get out the vote. It does seem that all that Mr. Obama needs to do now is to keep a clear head and his trademark cool to truly make history.

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