Gore and Bush in electrifying White House dash

Just 72 hours before the first of three pivotal candidates' debates in Boston, the American presidential race is shaping up as the closest since John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by a whisker 40 years ago.

Just 72 hours before the first of three pivotal candidates' debates in Boston, the American presidential race is shaping up as the closest since John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by a whisker 40 years ago.

In the past week, polls have come up with different results - a six-point edge for George W. Bush in one, a meagre lead for Vice President Al Gore in another - but their underlying conclusion is identical.

The contest right now is a statistical dead heat, meaning that although four out of five voters say they have already made up their minds, there is everything to play for before election day on 7 November.

The latest poll yesterday for Reuters/MSNBC, was the closest. Conducted among 1,213 likely voters by John Zogby, the pollster with the best record in the 1996 campaign, it gives the Vice-President 44 per cent and Mr Bush 43 per cent, with 6 per cent split between Ralph Nader of the Green Party, the Reform Party's Pat Buchanan, and Harry Browne of the Libertarian party, and a further seven per cent undecided.

The subcategories balance each other out. Mr Gore's lead among women voters is matched by Mr Bush's advantage among men. Mr Gore seems to be marginalising the challenge of Mr Nader from his left, just as the Republican candidate is squeezing the support for Mr Buchanan on his right.

If anything, Mr Bush will be taking the greater comfort from the new figures. Until this week, the campaign had been a mirror of 1988, when a sitting vice-president - in that case George Bush, father of George W - had wiped out a challenger's early lead, moved solidly ahead by Labour Day in early September, and went on to a crushing victory two months later.

Until a fortnight ago, that pattern had been holding in 2000. Vice-President Gore moved convincingly ahead after the conventions, while the Bush campaign seemed to be falling apart.

But for no very clear reason the rot has now been stopped and it has been the Republican who has been gaining ground in the last few days. Measured state-by-state too, the race could not be tighter.

As usual, the Democratic candidate can expect to carry the North-east and the West Coast, and Mr Bush is strong across an giant L-shaped swathe of the country formed by the Plains and Rocky Mountain states and the South.

Until recently, most analysts gave Mr Gore a slight lead, of perhaps 220 to 170, in the 538-vote electoral college vote, but well short of the required majority of 270. More than ever, the outcome hinges on a small number of swing states: the usual suspects of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri in the Mid-West, joined by Kentucky and Illinois and worth a total of 91 votes, as well as, perhaps surprisingly, Florida, where Mr Bush's brother Jeb is governor, but whose 25 electoral vote prize is a toss-up.

More than ever, the debates could settle matters. Three will be held between 3 and 16 October, pitting Mr Bush's likeability and common touch against the Vice-President's steamrollering style and command of the issues, among them tax cuts, health care, and now Mr Bush's proposal to open up arctic Alaska to oil drilling, denounced by Mr Gore as a disaster for the environment.

In the end though, something as trivial as a bad camera angle or misplaced gesture could make the difference. In 1960, Mr Nixon's shifty and swarthy appearance doomed him in a debate which radio listeners thought he had won.

In 1992, President Bush's defeat was sealed when he glanced at his watch with boredom during a "town-hall" debate with Bill Clinton.