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It's a measure of John McCain's steep White House climb that as he reaches for the finish line he's fighting for his political life on the home front.

In nearly three decades in politics, the veteran Republican senator and Vietnam War hero has never lost a campaign in Arizona.

But Arizona pollster Bruce Merrill says today's vote could be the one - the ultimate indignity of a failed U.S. presidential bid.

A spate of state polls, including Mr. Merrill's own Cronkite-Eight survey, show that Mr. McCain's once double-digit lead has shrunk to as little as two percentage points, or well within the margin of error.

In the final days of the race, his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, began running TV ads in a state that both campaigns and every major pollster had once assumed Mr. McCain would win easily. In 2004, George W. Bush captured the state by more than 10 percentage points.

No one expects Arizona's 10 Electoral College votes to decide the U.S. presidency.

Still, the tight race here may be the ultimate symbol of a campaign gone wrong.

Stumping in Pennsylvania before heading home to Arizona yesterday, Mr. McCain acknowledged that many pollsters and pundits have already written him off.

"Nothing is inevitable here," he assured supporters in Moon Township, Pa., one of several stops he made before returning to Arizona for a midnight rally last night and to vote today. "We never give up. We never quit."

Mr. Merrill says Mr. McCain has faced a "tsunami" of forces beyond his control, including the financial meltdown, Mr. Obama's significant cash advantage and a deeply unpopular Republican President.

But he has also made some game-changing mistakes, according to Mr. Merrill, including choosing the polarizing Sarah Palin as his running mate, and embracing the negative campaign style of Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's long-time political adviser.

"He's running as someone he isn't," explains Mr. Merrill, the senator's former pollster. "I don't think he's comfortable running a terribly negative campaign."

Ultimately, Mr. McCain's toughest challenge may come from the slumping economy.

Behind in the polls for months, and doing everything possible to close the gap, Mr. McCain has struggled to connect with voters, anxious about jobs, the bear market and the housing slump.

In one interview, Mr. McCain couldn't remember how many homes he owned. And in what could become a defining moment of the campaign, Mr. McCain declared at a September rally in Florida that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong," even as the country's financial system was crumbling and a recession seemed inevitable.

Even Arizona isn't the same place where Mr. McCain launched his political career in 1982. Like much of the West, it's much more Hispanic, younger and it's gradually swinging Democratic.

Mike Nordstrom, a 47-year-old Phoenix actuary and an independent, says he'll be voting for Mr. Obama and the Democrats this time because the country is "in need of a change."

Retiree Mary Ann Ryan, 78, a McCain supporter, is frustrated with the negative tone of both candidates.

"I'm not happy with either of them," she says, wheeling her shopping cart out of a Phoenix grocery store. "They spent so much money on the campaigns that should have gone to all those people who don't have jobs."

Many analysts say Mr. McCain's biggest blunder may have been picking the untested governor of Alaska as his running mate. Ms. Palin's mishandling of interview questions and her divisive views on issues, such as religion, sex education and abortion, has hampered Mr. McCain's ability to attract the independent swing voters he needs to win, according to David Schultz, a political analyst and professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn.

"The pitch to suburban hockey moms hasn't worked," he says. "There's very little evidence there were any votes in it."

Ms. Palin did rally the Republican Party's conservative base around Mr. McCain, a man they have long eyed with suspicion.

But going negative also forced Mr. McCain to run away from the traits that made him so popular in Arizona, and effective in Washington - his fiercely independent streak.

And in this race, polls suggest Mr. Obama is the one grabbing independents, by a roughly 60 to 40 margin.

Mr. McCain emerged from the Republican convention in September and went on the attack. Virtually 100 per cent of his campaign's TV ads in battleground states have been negative, branding Mr. Obama as a dangerously inexperienced candidate, with unseemly friends, and a socialist economic agenda.

In debates, and on the stump, Mr. McCain the maverick became a mudslinger, a role that did not seem to fit him particularly well. And from day to day, the message changed - from the economy, to Mr. Obama's ties to onetime radical William Ayers, or to taxes.

"He was chasing sound bites all over the place while Obama stayed on one issue: the economy," Mr. Merrill says.

Prof. Schultz of Hamline University says age may also be a factor.

Mr. McCain, who at 72 would be the oldest first-term president if elected, has strategically targeted his message at older voters - 50 plus, versus a new generation of U.S. voters in their 30s, who are expected to turn out in record numbers today.

"McCain is playing generational politics," he said.