An election memo from New York

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1)With a little over 48 hours left before the first polls close, many Americans are still wondering if Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama will indeed earn the title: President-elect. Although every national opinion poll gives Obama a comfortable victory over his Republican rival - including a 6.4% average of all polls taken by Real Clear Politics, a hugely-popular political website - many Democratic supporters are still hesitant about cooling the champagne just yet. And rightly so. As Karl Rove, President George Bush's senior adviser and strategist, reminded readers in his weekly Wall Street Journal op-ed column this week, that the pollsters, and the pundits who were watching these polls, had got it all wrong in 2000 and, again, in 2004.

2)In fact, if polls are any indication, Michelle Obama should be measuring the drapes of the White House by now. Forget national polls, even numbers out of most Battleground or Swing states, in addition to some previously-safe Red states, indicate they are either in the Blue column or at least leaning toward Obama. (Most commentators have in the last three months primarily focused on these "toss up" states such as Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, among others, which will ultimately decide who wins). There is even the danger that John McCain may not or will barely hold on to Arizona, his home state.

3)It is, however, the 9% per cent undecided voters that are preventing Michelle and other Democrats from any premature celebrations. Two days before November 4, these mainly rural white and women voters, according to pollsters, are unsure about who they will pick. To me, these are voters who are still unable to support Obama. It is unlikely anything will, this late, miraculously motivate them to sway toward the Democrat. No wonder, it is believed they will eventually be compelled to lean toward McCain, which will swing the election in his favor.

4)There has been no "October Surprise" nor discovery of Bin Laden's widely-expected pre-election tape yet. Even if such a tape does eventually surface, it unlikely to affect the election. Today the economy trumps everything. There is nothing new that the candidates can say that will now affect the result. The GOP machinery's efforts to bring up the issue of Obama's relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers or PLO-activist Rashid Khalidi, or his connection with ACORN, a community based organization, that has been accused of rampant voter registration fraud in some states this year, has held little thrust on voters, which fortifies this thesis. McCain's numbers, however, improved in the last three weeks since he and his popular running mate, Sarah Palin, introduced the world to Joe the Plumber, a brilliant metaphor, and their allusion that Obama was a socialist.

5)A quick note on Sarah Palin: If McCain does lose, there will be a split within the GOP. There are many who will blame his running mate and her initial sub-poor performance for the debacle. One thing is for sure, this will not be the last you will hear of Alaska's governor, as she will inevitably be groomed for a shot at the presidency in 2012. Whatever McCain supporters say, she excited the conservative base like nobody could have. While she may eventually prove to be a liability with key swing voters, put off by her world view and her lack of experience, she has ensured that hard-core Republicans will wait in those serpentine lines on election day to cast their ballot for John McCain. I met one such supporter in Pennsylvania last week, who informed me he had no plans to vote for McCain until he heard of Palin.

6)If John McCain does not win, it is not because of Sarah Palin. It is because of a brilliantly run campaign by Obama's top advisor David Axelrod, who ensured that his candidate stuck to his message, as much as the sheer cry for change for Americans. John Kerry, too, would have probably vanquished this time.

7)A prediction: conventional wisdom indicates that Obama will probably win. But I am not putting any money in this race. How people think and vote often belies such wisdom. The election will be close as far as the popular vote is concerned. And it will be decided by the 'undecideds', and how they feel on November 4.