Polls uniformly give Obama, D-Ill., a close but still crucial edge over McCain, R-Ariz., across the United States. The latest Zogby poll gives Obama the edge by 48 percent to 44 percent. These figures are just within the statistical margin of error, but if they hold they will give Obama as decisive a victory over McCain as incumbent President George W. Bush won against Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., four years ago.

The Zogby figures are echoed by Rasmussen. And the latest CBS-New York Times poll gives Obama a whopping 14-point lead over McCain.

Right now that appears a statistical aberration. And it's true that, as respected pollster John Zogby noted, Obama has still failed to break away and nail a race in which virtually every major policy issue is on his side.

However, when the overall poll figures are broken down into trends in the major Midwestern battleground states, the odds tilt dramatically in favor of Obama. The latest polls for Ohio in the past week have Obama up 3.5 points on average. In Pennsylvania he is up 10 points and in Florida he is up 5 points.

In one of the biggest mistakes in a campaign that has been filled with them, McCain -- apparently on the spur of the moment -- pulled all his major resources out of Michigan. That move only accelerated his precipitous decline through the major industrial states of the Midwest and Northeast.

Survey USA gives Pennsylvania, where McCain six weeks ago appeared poised to pull off an upset, as safely in the "blue" Obama camp by a landslide 55 percent to 40 percent in its most recent poll. The RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls gives Obama Pennsylvania by almost as much -- 13.4 points.

The figures are closer but still very clear in even more crucial Ohio: Obama 50 percent to McCain 45 percent. The latest Quinnipiac University poll, noted for its thoroughness, gives Obama Minnesota by another landslide margin -- 54 percent to 37 percent.

John Ibbitson put the current situation in a nutshell in the Toronto Globe and Mail Wednesday. "The economic meltdown stampeded white voters to the Democratic Party. ... Mr. McCain, they've concluded, is too erratic, too old or too Republican to be trusted."

The third debate, therefore, appears to be McCain's last shot. Given the U.S. national symbolism of baseball, it is grimly fitting that he faces his third pitch on the same night that the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers both face the prospect of being knocked out of the American League and National League Championship Series, dashing their dreams of getting to the World Series. In the presidential race, it's Obama who's been Mr. October.

McCain's prospects for pulling off an upset debate win appear negligible. He was perceived by the American public, according to polls, as clearly losing the first two debates. He and his staff have shown no sign of reversing their disastrous losing track record going into the third one.

It seems that no one can "win" one of these debates given their format. You can only lose -- by a gross faux pas -- and Obama is in perfectly controlled, no-mistakes mode. He is the National Football League team with a fourth-quarter lead that he is protecting by pounding the ball on the ground. Not pretty, but effective.

To add to McCain's woes, the Obama campaign is still out-organizing him. Obama's much-criticized background as a community organizer was crucial to his upset Democratic primary campaign victory over the heavily favored Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. Now he and his team are showing the same mastery of scale and detail that characterized Karl Rove's management of Bush's victories in 2000 and 2004.

CNN Tuesday reported that young Jewish volunteers for Obama were traveling to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for the senator from Illinois. The Obama campaign even has ads on certain video games. They are leaving no stone unturned.

The third debate is the last time McCain can truly help himself. If no serious inroads are made, he'll need help from an outside source, such as an Obama gaffe, which seems unlikely as Obama has shown a great discipline for staying with his safe messages. And the CBS-New York Times poll suggested McCain's negative ads have backfired.

It was the great economic crisis that buried McCain's presidential hopes. He was doing surprisingly well until then. But his response on the economy has been feeble, cautious and inconsequential compared with the scale of the catastrophe so far. As much as $9 trillion has been estimated to have been wiped off combined U.S. stock market and housing values.

Fear has dominated this election campaign that was supposed to be based on hope. McCain, in desperation, fell back on fear of Obama as being too unknown, too inexperienced and potentially too radical to be elected president. But voters are much more scared now of a continuation of the Bush-era zero-regulation policies that led to the great financial meltdown.

The economy therefore will dominate the last debate. If McCain doesn't pull a dramatically bolder plan out of his hat to reassure the American public that he's on top of this most crucial issue, he's a dead duck. If it's another 90 minutes of sparring, Obama has closed the deal.

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(Analysis by Martin Sieff)