Florida and Ohio turn to Obama

Good news for the Barack Obama camp today as polls conducted in the crucial swing states of Florida and Ohio show the Democrats leading the Republicans with surprisingly high margins of 51-43 and 50-42 respectively. If the new polls, which were taken by Quinnipiac University, are to be believed, then, with five weeks to go before the presidential election on November 4, the electoral landscape has changed radically.

Florida and Ohio have 47 Electoral College votes between them - a significantly high number which, if secured by Obama in the election, could tip the balance and send him to the White House. Until this week, opinion polls had shown the two states either too close to call or voting Republican, as they did in 2004.

"It is difficult to find a modern competitive presidential race that has swung so dramatically, so quickly and so sharply this late in the campaign,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The crashing economy and Obama’s performance in the first presidential debate have played a part in the Democrats’ resurgence in the two battleground states. Just over half of Floridian voters who were polled after the debate on Friday said Obama has been more helpful than harmful in solving the economic crisis, compared with 45 per cent who said the same of John McCain. In Ohio, 43 per cent of voters polled thought Obama outdid McCain in the Mississippi debate last Friday, whereas only 33 per cent thought the opposite was true.

Andrew Romano of Newsweek believes that the new polls make Obama the clear favourite in the general election. Referring to the number of Electoral College votes needed to win the election, Romano says: "Obama simply has far more paths to 270 than McCain". The political poll-watch site Real Clear Politics showed today that if the election were held this week Obama would most likely win the presidency with 348 Electoral College votes to McCain’s 190.

The new polls were released as the two Senators returned to Washington today from the campaign trail to take part in the Senate vote on an amended version of Hank Paulson’s $700bn bail-out bill which was rejected by the House of Representatives on Monday. If the upper house passes the bill, the thinking is that it will have a better chance when re-presented to the lower house, probably on Thursday. Minor changes to the bill include a raised FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) insurance cap, from $100,000 to $250,000.

Both McCain and Obama were firming up their positions on the rescue plan as global shares made a slow recovery on Wednesday ahead of the Senate vote.

McCain’s first response was to mention on Fox News that he "just might" suspend his campaign once again. "Maybe it’s not such a bad idea", suggests Michael Tomasky in a video blog on the Guardian’s website. Tomasky points out that the bail-out bill only failed by 12 votes in the House or Representatives. If McCain can convince a small number to change sides and back the $700bn plan he could theoretically take credit for the passing of the bill.

The Obama-Biden camp has remained comparatively quiet during the economic turmoil. Howard Fineman at Newsweek says this is due to Obama’s efforts to appear as a “deal-doer and peacemaker, the one who can bring hope by listening to everyone and working with anyone”. However, writes Fineman, Obama has made two key moves which helped to move the bail-out bill forward. "One was to say early and loudly, that he opposed including in the plan a provision to give bankruptcy judges more power to ease the terms of home mortgages." The other was "not to make his support conditional on the channeling of funds to ‘neighbourhood’ and other grassroots housing groups".

Meanwhile another blow has been dealt to the Republican presidential ticket. Conservative columnist George Will told a gathering of Senate aides on Monday that Sarah Palin was "obviously" not qualified to become president should John McCain be elected and something happen to him. Will conceded that Palin had been given a hard time by the media, but also admitted that the Alaskan Governor’s notorious interview with CBS’s Katie Couric had been "a disaster".

LAST UPDATED 3:23 PM, OCTOBER 1, 2008