Yet there are several indications that this election is actually far from over. Romney's first hope must be that people are simply lying to pollsters, and not wanting to seem racist by admitting that they are planning to vote against America's first black president. He will take solace from the fact that Republican Governor Scott Walker's victory in the recent Wisconsin recall vote was predicted by the polls, but not his healthy margin. In each of the 1980, 1994 and 2004 elections the polls turned out to have been skewed significantly towards the Democrats.

Romney's second cause for hope is that in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, Obama's job approval rating is hovering at or below 50 per cent, which is hardly healthy for a president seeking re-election in a recession. Likely first-time voters, who went 66 per cent to 32 per cent for Obama in 2008, are much more evenly distributed this year at 49 per cent to 41 per cent, while white voters are leaning further to Romney today than they did to John McCain four years ago. (Obama has the black vote completely sewn up, with some polls suggesting numbers approaching 95 per cent, and Obama also does much better — by a 10 per cent margin — among women.)

Nearly one in six Americans lives in poverty today, according to US government statistics, and there have been 42 consecutive months where unemployment has been over 8 per cent, a figure that is far higher among blacks and Latinos. With 23 million people struggling to find work, more than during the Carter Administration, a sense that Romney and Paul Ryan might get the economy going again could overcome the fact that Obama is seen as more likeable personally than Romney. The scare tactics adopted by the Democrats — "The Republicans would destroy Medicare," says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly — might not work if the Republicans spend enough money getting the truth across, and there's every indication they will. Similarly, America might have outgrown the kind of naked class warfare that induces Bill Clinton to state of the Republicans: "They'll hurt the middle class and the poor and put your future on hold to give the tax cuts to the folks who've been getting it all along."

When in fine pantomime style Clinton asked the Democratic convention about Obama, "Are we better off than when he took office?" the audience all yelled, "Yes!" The truth could not be more different, and therein lies Romney's best hope. A house worth $200,000 in 2008 is typically worth around $140,000 today; many 401(k) retirement funds invested in equity have fallen in value by up to 40 per cent since Obama won the last election. No amount of Democrats shouting "Yes!" can convince Americans who look at their net assets today and know that the true answer is no. Whether that persuades them to go out and vote for Romney is another matter: in Ohio 4 per cent more voters believe Obama is more trustworthy on the economy than Romney; in Virginia it's tied, and in Florida Romney leads on that question by 1 per cent. For all too many Americans, Romney, as one wag put it, "looks like the guy who sacked your dad".

It seems incredible that a man who was CEO of one of America's most successful companies, who made a personal fortune of over $200 million from his business acumen, who turned round the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and whose whole career seems to personify the American Dream, is lagging on the question of economic competence behind a former community organiser from Chicago who publicly derides entrepreneurship and individual enterprise, and who hadn't run any enterprise before entering politics. Yet this is modern America, a country now only a few paces away from becoming a fully-fledged welfare state on the European model. And the next step of those few paces will be taken when and if Obama is re-elected on November 6.