Race for the White House ain’t over

With less than a week until Americans go to the polls, only a last-minute comeback can save John McCain. Yet the Republican war hero is nothing if not a fighter, and American history is full of extraordinary twists and doomed contenders who defied the odds.

Perhaps the closest American election of all was the contest of 1800, in which the president was chosen by an electoral college of the great and good. When the votes were counted, it turned out that Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both from the "Democratic-Republican" Party, had 73 apiece.

The election went before the House of Representatives but after seven days and 35 ballots, the two men could not be separated. At last, on the 36th ballot, their mutual friend Alexander Hamilton persuaded Maryland, Vermont and Delaware to change their votes, and Jefferson was elected.

Unfortunately, Burr was not a good loser. Four years later, he challenged Hamilton to the most infamous duel in American history, shooting him dead and destroying his own career in the process.

Most losing candidates, however, have accepted defeat with better grace. In 1876 the Democratic governor of New York, Samuel Tilden, was convinced he had won the election after beating Rutherford Hayes by 184 votes to 165.

But with the Civil War still fresh, Federal troops still occupying the South and fears that the Democrats would undo their reforms, the Republicans had no desire to give in. Even as newspapers were reporting Tilden's victory, Republican returning boards in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida were throwing out his votes. With talk of a new Civil War, party barons decided that a compromise would suit everyone. The Democrats conceded the election to Hayes, while the Republicans agreed to pull their troops out of the South. And Tilden who had comfortably won the popular vote retired to a life of gentlemanly obscurity.

Modern elections have been barely less dramatic. In 1948, experts were so certain that another New York governor, Thomas Dewey, would win that newspapers ran banner headlines acclaiming his victory only for the feisty President Harry Truman to upset the odds with an aggressive last-minute campaign.

And in 1960, when Richard Nixon seemed poised for victory, John F Kennedy took the election with some very murky practices in Texas and Illinois. Nixon refused to contest the result, as his advisers suggested. But he never forgot it, and years later his bitterness played a central part in the dirty tricks that forced him from office in the Watergate scandal.

John McCain probably needs a miracle to follow Jefferson, Truman and Nixon into the Oval Office. But in America, political miracles do happen as George W Bush, who owed his election in 2000 to the Supreme Court, would surely be the first to admit.