White House race is still Obama’s to lose

There is now just a month to go to the US presidential election and what a month it promises to be.

The opinion polls at the moment are suggesting that Barack Obama will emerge victorious, but as we know in electoral contests, much comes down to what happens in the final month of the campaign.

A number of factors will be crucial to the outturn at this relatively late stage. The key ones must include the performance of the candidates themselves, the performance of the economy and particularly the labour market, and the voter turnout on the day, particularly given the campaign by the Republican Party to discourage certain legal aliens by insisting on more rigid identification procedures at the polling booths, despite the fact that they are entitled to be in the US and to vote.