Although the Tea Party disliked Romney, seeing him as a "country club" Republican and a "Rino" (Republican In Name Only), his nomination of their poster-boy pin-up Ryan means that they are going to be enthusiastically endorsing the ticket, which they might not have if Romney had chosen a doppelganger such as Rob Portman. With around 92 per cent of electors already decided who to vote for, getting one's supporters out on the day will be almost as important as winning over the undecided, and as the 2010 mid-term elections proved, the Tea Party's organisation on the ground in superb at doing just that.  

For all that a presidential election ought to be about issues as much as — or ideally more than — personalities, the 2012 race so far resolutely isn't. Both sides claim to be running on the issues, of course, and blame the other for focusing on personality instead, but that is only really true of the Republicans, because Obama wins "likeability" polls by 59 per cent to Romney's 30 per cent, so there is little advantage for the Grand Old Party to attack Obama's personality.

Yet after three months of relentlessly attacking Romney as a heartless, tax-dodging, "vulture capitalist" asset-stripper — at a cost of at least $131 million in TV advertising alone — the Democrats have not yet established a clear lead in the presidential, let alone the congressional, race. About 16 per cent of Americans are willing to vote for Romney even though they don't much like him. If America's economic woes allow him to increase that number by 5 per cent, or if the Republican Convention in Tampa increases his likeability even fractionally, it could still be President-elect Romney in November.

The number of genuinely undecided voters is estimated at around 7 per cent, far fewer than at this stage in 2008, and they are being chased by a staggering $6.5 billion of spending on TV and cable adverts for federal and state races this year, up from $4.8 billion in 2008. In the past three months, Romney has raised over $100m each month, with Obama hovering at $75m. This could be significant if it continues, because for all that there are 130 million voters, the result will be decided by about a quarter of a million wavering voters in about ten battleground states. With unemployment rising in six of them — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Virginia — there might well be enough voters who will vote for the successful businessman whom they don't much like. In three more battleground states — Nevada, Florida and North Carolina — the unemployment rate remains unchanged, and in Nevada it's 11.6 per cent, the highest in the nation. Only in Ohio is it falling, for now.