is it over?

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This is the 13th presidential campaign I have followed, as a teenager and as an adult, and the only previous campaign that generated anything like the same passion and enthusiasm was the first of those: John Kennedy’s in 1960. For many people, including myself, the excitement of this campaign is the prospect of an African-American president who could change the direction of his country, and perhaps the world, after the barren Bush years.

However, we should not allow excitement to mask reality. The Obama-McCain contest has generated a number of myths about America’s electorate – and it has also generated the polling evidence to extinguish those myths. What is that evidence? And how far can we trust the polls that tell us that Obama is heading for an emphatic victory?

more from The New Statesman here.