The Hindu Business Line : Will clear winner emerge from US polls?

IT is now down to the last few hours of the US election cycle that has been intense and bitter. And with this comes the determination of both the Democrats and the Republicans to ensure that every vote gets to be counted on November 2.

This Presidential election is getting down to be a nail-biter and what worries many is that a clear winner may not be decided on the night of November 2.

Still scary to many is the prospect of this election being worse than what it was in 2000 when the Republicans and the Democrats slugged it out in the courts for 36 days before the US Supreme Court put its foot down.

The Democrats did not savour the idea of the election being "handed" to Mr George W. Bush. A bumper sticker this time reads `Re-Defeat Bush'.

One nightmare is that if this election turns out to be a contested one, it might not confine itself to just one State. A prediction is that there will be multiple contests in different States and quite unlike the legal circus that took place in Florida the last time around. Given this, there is hope, and perhaps even a prayer, that the American electorate will turn out and pick a winner decisively this Tuesday.

But even the seasoned political analyst is unwilling to predict a winner and the reason is not too difficult to guess - the nation is divided in the middle, tempers are running high and so are emotions.

Mr Bush is in the lead in many polls, but only `very' marginally, and this is especially so in many of the battleground States of the Mid-West where this election may eventually be decided.

There are many things that stand out in this election cycle and some of them pertain to the candidates and their campaign styles. But there are one or two aspects that will be long talked about, over and beyond academic settings.

Whoever said that foreign policy did not matter in the American Presidential elections and that people are only concerned about their pocketbooks? This may be true for most part, but this election is the first wartime election after 1968 and it all comes down to foreign policy - the war in Iraq and who is a better candidate on terrorism.

The Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, started off with a strong emphasis on economic policies and domestic issues, but in the last few days and hours is keeping the focus on war and terrorism - of course the Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, had to inject himself into the fray at the very last minute.

The best Senator Kerry tried to do is to make the outsourcing linkage between bin Laden and economics. The Bush administration, in the words of the Democratic challenger, had outsourced the nabbing of bin Laden to the Afghan warlords just as how it outsourced jobs!

A striking feature of this November election is how focussed it has been on the Presidential race forgetting that 435 Members of Congress from the House of Representatives and 34 Senators are battling to retain their seats.

Most of the incumbents on Capitol Hill are returned anyway, but control of Congress is critical for whoever wins the White House. Right now, it seems that the House will stay under the Republican control. And the Democrats appear to be fighting an uphill battle for wresting control of the Senate, which is now 51-49 in favour of the Republicans.

Political analysts are even predicting that the Democrats may end up losing one seat in their overall tally. And the extremely tight Presidential race has not helped candidates running in close contests.