In the last week of the American presidential election all opinion polls gave the lead to Democratic candidate Barack Obama over Republican candidate John McCain although by varying amounts. Even though in recent times opinion polls have turned out to be quite accurate predictions of public support for candidates they are by no means taken for granted. In the last days of their campaigning both candidates were urging their supporters for continued intense canvassing to convert statistics expressed on the opinion polls to votes. They had to get voters out of their homes and make them cast their votes. This is all the more important in the American presidential poll which has a remarkable low voter turn out as compared with most Third World countries where 75 to 80 per cent of the voters cast their ballots.

A Reuters report last week described results of a poll as 'snapshot of the electorate at a particular time.' Some electoral pundit said that voting could change even in the last two days. Thus both Barack Obama, and former President Bill Clinton who turned up in Florida on Thursday to support fellow Democrat Obama urged their supporters not to relax. Cast their votes early and make determined efforts to get their supporters to the polls.

 Opinion polls

A Reuters/C-Span/Zogbe tracking poll last week gave Obama a 7 points lead, the Pew Research Centre gave Obama a 15 points lead while Rauessen poll gave him only a 3 points lead. The Gallup Poll (traditional model) gave Obama a lead of 2 percentage points while an 'expanded model' assuming higher voter turn out among minorities and young people gave him a lead of 7 percent.

The Reuters report said that McCain supporters expected a high voter turnout among all groups diluting the impact of the increase of black voters. Another factor going against statistics of the polls is called the 'Bradley Effect.' Voters who do not want to be labelled as racist overstate their support for the black candidate and in the confines of the polling booth may vote contrary to what they had told the pollsters.

Obama voting Machine

In the process of converting expressions of support into actual votes, Obama is said to have a distinct advantage over McCain. Obama has built up an 'army of earnest supporters' with black youth as well as white educated Americans. He has been building up this voting machine over two years since he commenced his march to White House and his success in outdoing Hillary Clinton, wife of Bill Clinton who is also known as a great communicator of people is attributed to the efficacy of this voting machine. The Economist (October 25 issue) gives a description of this machine in the state of North Carolina. 'In North Carolina Obama has a whopping 45 field offices while McCain has 40, but these are simply local Republican Party offices which have to handle local and Congressional races as well. Obama's offices are his own. Each one is led by a paid staffer but nearly all the work is done by 17,000 volunteers Obama had recruited in the state... Some of Obama's volunteers sign up in the old fashioned way, in person. Others volunteer on-line. In their local corner of the Obama website they can meet other Obamaphiles and arrange to knock on specific doors in their neighbourhoods. They can download information about who lives in each house, which party they belong to and what they told the last phone canvasser. They can update this information each time they meet a voter. They can spend hours on the website chatting with like-minded people, watching the candidates speeches and upload their own Barack-related videos.' The McCain campaign, The Economist notes 'has nothing like this.'

In addition to these IT brigades, Obama has his own 'foot soldiers' that spend about 40 hours a week knocking on doors canvassing for votes while doing their normal jobs. The Obama volunteers are said to be very highly committed. Some American commentators say that this kind of canvassing has not been seen before.

Conservative Republicans scross over

Another plus factor for Obama has been Conservative Republicans who are by no means pleased with George Bush's tenure of office or are put out by the maverick antics of John McCain such as in the choice of Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska as his vice presidential candidate. Four Star General Colin Powell who was George Bush's Secretary of State who declared his support for Obama last week, despite McCain - a military colleague being his friend, said that he did not see Sarah Palin as a person to be the vice President and in an eventuality become the Commander- in-Chief of the armed forces. Obama has other notable support from the Republican Conservatives such as the granddaughter of former Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower (who introduced Obama at the Democratic Party Convention), Christopher Buckley, son of conservative William Buckley and well-known academics such as Francis Fukuyama, author of the controversial book End of Civilisation.

Underdog

Former navy fighter pilot John McCain however is not put out by these shifts from the Conservative base. 'I am used to being an underdog' is one of his campaign slogans. Colin Powell may go over to the other side but he has four other former Secretaries of States backing him in addition to about 50 Generals, he points out.

The media is apparently backing Barack Obama and the Fox News channel that is apparently a strong backer of McCain alleges that the media has been biased and unfair to McCain.