Republican presidential nominee John McCain is brushing aside new polls that suggest he is falling further behind his Democratic rival Barack Obama.
The latest Associated Press-GfK survey has Obama leading among likely voters 48 to 41 per cent. Only three weeks ago, before the recent crisis in the U.S. financial sector, an AP-Gfk poll had McCain slightly ahead.
Asked why a number of state and national polls this week have shown a similar McCain drop, the Arizona senator shrugged off the question.
"Cause life isn't fair," he said.
"Look, we're doing fine," McCain told Fox News on Thursday. "We were up in the polls, and then we were down in the polls, and we were up in the polls, and down in the polls ... you know, we can't worry about the day-to-day tick-tock."
The latest poll numbers, however, come at a tough time for the McCain campaign, which has also been grappling with a decline in McCain running mate Sarah Palin's popularity.
McCain and Palin are hoping her debate with Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden tonight will stop the presidential ticket's shrinking poll numbers.
While the VP debates have rarely turned an election, analysts say a lot is riding for both candidates on Thursday night's performances in St. Louis.
Palin, the Republican Governor of Alaska, has made headlines for a series of gaffes over the past two weeks despite her limited press contact. On several occasions, she has given disjointed and sometimes baffling answers when questioned by the few reporters who've been allowed to interview her.
In an interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson, Palin appeared not to know the Bush Doctrine, the philosophical underpinnings of the Bush Administration's policy of preemptive military action that led the U.S. into the war in Iraq.
In a CBS News interview with anchor Katie Couric that aired Wednesday, Palin couldn't name a Supreme Court case other than Roe versus Wade, the landmark decision which opened the way for national abortion rights in the U.S.
"A disastrous performance tonight by Sarah Palin could effectively end this presidential race (and) just give it to Obama and Biden," CTV's Tom Clark told Canada AM on Thursday.
But Clark also noted that Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, has also been known as a gaffe machine and so must choose his words carefully.
"The read on this is that, perhaps, Joe Biden has a bit more to lose in this debate because the expectations for Sarah Palin are so low, and Joe Biden is famous for saying really dumb things," Clark said.
"If he does that tonight, especially if he does it in a way that has the appearance of condescension towards Sarah Palin, then that could go very badly for him."
Analysts have also noted that Biden's gaffes during the campaign have largely gone unnoticed because the media has focused on Palin. For example, the Senator, who is known for his expertise on domestic and international affairs, recently said Franklin Roosevelt addressed the nation on TV after the 1929 market crash. In fact, Herbert Hoover was president at the time and commercial television wasn't yet widely available.
"Let's face it -- (Biden is) on the side that's popular. The media has not been nearly as critical of him as they've been of Palin. And because of that, Biden has the most to lose in this debate," David Steinberg, director of the University of Miami's debate team, told The Associated Press.
