A swing through Ohio: The home of Joe the Plumber

As a US election season nears its climax, some things never change in the quintessential swing state of Ohio: the crisp air of autumn, the weird mix of candidates' posters and Halloween skeletons on leaf-strewn suburban lawns, and the rows over voter registration. This time, however, there is one rather large difference. For the first time in a dozen years, the Democrats look as though they might actually win.

Not one of them, of course, is counting their chickens, even though Barack Obama has taken a consistent lead over John McCain, nationally and in Ohio as well. They know better than anyone that although no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying the state, very few Democrats have done so either. That is why much may hinge on Friday's ruling by the Supreme Court in Washington, rejecting a Republican challenge to the registration of 200,000 out of 660,000 newly enrolled voters in Ohio, the bulk of them probably Democrats. And that is why, for these few days at least, all eyes are on "Joe the Plumber".

Whether Joe Wurzelbacher of Toledo in north-western Ohio is in fact a plumber – whether, indeed, his real name is Joe – is a matter of much debate. But when McCain evoked him in Wednesday's presidential debate as the incarnation of the hard-working US taxpayer about to be skinned alive by Obama's tax rises, he became a global celebrity, hailed as potential arbiter of an entire election. Unfortunately, though Joe is an Ohioan, his problems are not really those that consume his state or his country.

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Like the rest of the US, Ohio is living in fear, but not of tax increases for would-be plumbing entrepreneurs making over $250,000 (£145,000) a year. The dread runs far deeper, about an economic crisis consuming savings, jobs, homes, even national self-belief.

Here in Canton and the surrounding Stark County, long held to be "the bellwether county in the bellwether state", its emblem is not Joe Wurzelbacher and his ambition to have his own business. A better symbol of Canton is the empty red-brick Hoover factory six miles north of the city centre. Once it was the headquarters of one of the marque names of American business. A year ago the place shut down for good, with the loss of the last 750 jobs. In front, a US flag still flies defiantly above a tended lawn. But all around are vast parking lots eerily empty, with weeds sprouting through cracks in the tarmac.

"Normally, I would say this is as bad as it can get – except that these days it might get even worse," says Jake Croston of the Canton branch of the Labourers' International Union, chronicling the industry closures that have left the local hospital as the biggest local employer. Nor was it coincidence either that the fattest section of Thursday's edition of The Repository, Canton's newspaper, was 11 pages devoted to the sale by auction of foreclosed homes.

Oddly, though, despite the crisis, the political mood is less edgy, less confrontational than it was four years ago. One reason, surely, is that McCain is not as divisive and polarising as George Bush, and less in thrall to militant social conservatives (who, despite Sarah Palin, have never much trusted him anyway). Nor does Republican scaremongering work as it once did. In 2004, a message from Osama bin Laden a few days before election day may have tipped the scales in Bush's favour. But in 2008, who cares about the mutterings of al-Qa'ida when pensions, benefits and wage packets are going up in smoke? And maybe it's because Obama right now seems likely to win, with or without Ohio.

This time four years ago, Bush and John Kerry were neck and neck in the state, while Stark County, sitting astride all its faultlines, was billed as the patch of earth that would decide a presidency. In the event the Democrat carried Stark County, but Mr Bush won Ohio and with it the White House. So much for bellwethers.

After his solidly reassuring performance in Wednesday's final televised encounter with McCain, Obama served notice that in these remaining 16 days of campaigning he will take the fight on to Republican turf, in states such as Virginia, West Virginia, Missouri and North Carolina. The strategy makes perfect sense. This year, it will take a small miracle for McCain to capture any states that Kerry won. His sole hope is to hang on to the ones that voted Republican and gave Bush his slender victory, by 286 electoral college votes to 252. If present patterns hold, even that will be desperately difficult. Iowa, which narrowly went for Bush last time, is as good as gone. If Obama can pick up a couple of other states, he wins, irrespective of Ohio and Florida.

Not that anyone is ignoring Ohio, however. Once upon a time, in 1896, a Canton native named William McKinley could become America's 25th President with a now legendary "front porch" campaign, staying in his house on Market Street and having the voters (an estimated 750,000 in all) come to him. This time one or other presidential or vice-presidential nominee is stumping in Ohio almost daily.

But when they are not, Mr Obama's far superior financial resources mean he is hands-down winner of the even more ubiquitous television and radio ad wars. "Barack Obama is running his campaign like a Republican," a local strategist joked last week. "He's better organised, his people are smarter and he's outspending the opposition."

Also doing no harm is the fierce contest for the vacant congressional seat for Ohio's 16th District, which includes Canton and Stark County, and which Republicans have held for 60 years. This time the Democratic candidate, John Boccieri, has an eight-point lead in the polls. Of such synergies electoral sweeps are made.

But it is certainly not a done deal. The battle-lines in Ohio reflect those across the country as a whole. McCain will carry rural areas, and the traditionally conservative southern and western parts of the state. To win, however, he needs to limit the Democratic vote in old industrial Ohio. And, once again, everything depends on the lower-income white workers, male and female – the very same voters Obama had such trouble connecting with during his marathon primary struggle with Hillary Clinton.

Time and again they kept her candidacy alive: first in New Hampshire in January, where a second Clinton loss after Iowa would have finished her off; and later in Ohio and Pennsylvania. An Obama win in either would have been a knockout. But these voters, linear (often physical) descendants of the "Reagan Democrats" of the 1980s, would not go along. In the closing stretch, they added insult to injury by handing the front-runner massive defeats of 40 percentage points or more, in the poor and predominantly white Appalachian states of Kentucky and West Virginia.

Thanks to the economic crisis – rather than any new-found affection for Obama – the signs are that even those Democratic women who after Clinton's defeat swore they would vote for McCain in November, are returning to the fold. Palin was dropped into their midst to tempt them, but every poll suggests that the Illinois senator is solidifying support among every traditional Democratic group.

Even so, no one can be sure. Obama may have won the debates – but then so did Kerry four years ago. Ohio, where the mid-Atlantic turns into the Midwest, is a miniature America, a mix of industry and agriculture, city and country, rich and poor, black and white – even of North and South. "Here, it's always iffy," says Jake Croston. "As a Democrat, you couldn't imagine a more favourable year. But if you can win some other way, without Ohio, then maybe as a Democrat you'd be better off looking elsewhere."

And this time there is the extra unquantifiable variable of race. Call it the "Bradley Effect" or the "Kohut Lacuna" (a phenomenon identified by the noted political researcher Andrew Kohut, whereby poorer voters less disposed to blacks often refuse to take part in surveys), the suspected consequence is similar: polls tend to overstate support for an African-American candidate.

Is this true in the case of Obama? No one knows. But if it is, his current lead could evaporate on 4 November faster than the value of a pension plan in the Wall Street meltdown. As Curt Mayle, another union official, readily admits, racial prejudice is still common among poorer Ohioans. "If it wasn't for race, this would be a slam dunk," he said. "And if Barack Obama loses, it'll be because of the race factor."