Larry Elliot on today's Guardian website. Yanks, take nothing for granted. You could easily be in for four more years.

...the polls have started to tighten a bit and are likely to close still further over the coming weeks, because Trump has three things going for him.

The first is that the number of new Covid-19 cases appears to have peaked, with definite signs of progress in some of the bigger states such as Florida, Texas and California. What happens to the virus over the coming months will have a material impact on the state of the economy.

The second – somewhat ironically – is that activity in China has bounced back more rapidly than expected, and this is keeping global stock markets buoyant. Here, Trump is getting the best of both worlds: he piggybacks on Chinese growth while at the same time getting tough with Beijing over trade and human rights – something that plays well with voters.

Finally, he has the benefit of being the incumbent, which allows him to pull off stunts like the signing of executive orders to provide fresh support to the unemployed. Under the separation of powers, Congress holds the purse strings in the US so Trump’s initiative is unlikely to amount to much, but that’s not the point. This is all about who gets blamed for the impasse between Republicans and Democrats over the next phase of stimulus.

To win, Trump needs nothing to go wrong and everything to go right in the coming months: no surges in Covid-19, no setbacks to the economy, no share price crashes on Wall Street. It is a tall order but Biden should take nothing for granted.