PRESIDENT KERRY SAYS, "THE ONE IS A LOCK":

Will a funny thing happen on the way to Washington? (Edward Luce, October 17 2008, Financial Times)

To judge by some, although by no means all, of the recent polls, Mr Obama may even pull off a 1980-style Ronald Reagan landslide. Parts of America, such as North Carolina and Virginia, which last elected a Democrat when Mr Obama was in diapers, show him in the lead by ground-shifting margins.

Then there is the money. No candidate has ever raised anything like Mr Obama’s tally, which could exceed $600m (£350m, €450m) if the recent escalation in donations is any guide. By my estimate, Mr Obama’s remaining war chest could fund at least two back-to-back British general elections. Mr McCain, meanwhile, might be able to finance a creditable shot at the New Jersey governorship.

Nor, in spite of the acuity of Mr McCain’s punchline, would a dramatic stock market recovery be likely to dent Mr Obama’s fortunes. It would come too late to restore the American public’s badly shaken confidence in their financial system and in the free-trade economy that Mr McCain so gallantly defends.

Besides, no resurgence in the Dow Jones could reflate a property market that has been the chief source of household spending since the Bush administration took office. Mr Obama can rest easy: Joe Public – and even Joe Plumber – will be feeling the pain for many months to come.

Yet conventional wisdom is often wrong. For a start, as any property analyst can attest, it tends to be self-affirming. The media has leapt on recent polls that show Mr Obama with double-digit margins. But until Friday, when the conservative Drudge Report led on the much narrower two-point lead that Gallup gave Mr Obama, those polls that have not hinted at a landslide have been downplayed. And there have been quite a few.

The RealClear Politics website’s average of polls, which gives Mr Obama a lead of 6.8 per cent over Mr McCain, offers a better guide to the situation. It compares to John Kerry’s lead just a few weeks before he lost the 2004 election to Mr Bush. It is also slightly lower than Mr Obama’s lead over Hillary Clinton shortly before she bested him – and the media – in the New Hampshire primary at the start of the year.