Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory.

One month ago Democratic strategist Paul Maslin, who closely tracks the electoral map, thought that perhaps Democrats would win by a couple percentage points.

At best, he thought Obama might earn a slight majority as Democrats earned in 1976, the last time the party's presidential nominee cracked the 50 per cent barrier.

"Now it's a whole different world," Maslin said.

"The economy is way beyond 1992.

In 1980, it was Iran hostage crisis and the economy.

I've never seen an issue take this kind of prominence."

Gallup finds that 69 per cent of Americans believe the economy is the most important issue facing the nation.

The second most cited issue, the war in Iraq, is named by only 11 per cent of voters.

Bill Clinton's former pollster Doug Schoen calls this the "economic tsunami".

And it's this tsunami that has altered the electoral map in a way that Obama himself could not.

"Obama has not changed the map," Schoen said.

Nearly six in10 Americans believe that the United States could be on the verge of entering an economic spiral similar to the Great Depression, according to a CNN-Opinion Research Corp poll conducted over the weekend.

"These events are conspiring against McCain," said Tony Fabrizio, the pollster for 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole.

"The only thing that we can hope is that these circumstances change in terms of being off the front page.

It was only a month ago that McCain seemed poised to overcome the public's poor view of the Republican Party, having literally lifted the GOP's prospects with his own and largely escaped the political deadweight of President Bush.

That changed September 15 when the stock market tumbled 505 points.

Until September 15 Obama had only reached 50 per cent support in the Gallup tracking poll once, at the peak of his Democratic convention bounce.

Since September 15, Obama has at least hit the 50 per cent mark eight times, including for the last five days.

Many veteran GOP and Democratic pollsters who have been sceptical of Obama's effort to win red states like North Carolina now believe the economic turmoil has put them well within reach.

- Politico

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