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The research that came out of the oven in the middle of the storm that fell on Wall Street indicated that the worsening economic crisis helped U.S. Senator Barack Obama to gain speed in the race for the White House, but analysts linked to the Democratic Party have expressed skepticism about the ability that the candidate must jump the obstacles ahead.

According to Gallup, Obama now has the support of 49% of American voters and the Republican Party’s candidate, Senator John McCain, is at 45%. There are signs that in recent days Obama opened a small lead over the rival, but the dispute between them continues apertadíssima, especially in the weight that should be more decisive in the game.

Many observers find astonishing that Obama has not fired in front of the opponent so far. The unpopularity of Republicans and the government of President George W. Bush, the distress of the electorate with the economy and weariness with the war in Iraq created an environment so favorable to the Democrats it is hard to understand why their candidate is not performing better in the polls.

Many voters were frightened with the inexperience of Obama, a characteristic that the opponents insist highlight. Some can not identify with him because he is black. But in recent weeks a growing chorus among Democrats rose to assign the difficulties of Obama the factors that have nothing to do with racism or cheat the Republicans, pointing to flaws in the conduct of their campaign and how he communicates with the electorate.

“[Obama] is in danger of missing an election that many thought was impossible to lose,” he said last week William Galston, who was a graduate adviser of former President Bill Clinton and now works at the Brookings Institution, an influential center of studies . “The reason is simple: the most important issue for the electorate, the economy, [it] does not have a clear message.”

In an open letter, the candidate who has moved on Tuesday, Galston made several criticisms of Obama. He said that his speeches are too long and have too much poetry, that his attacks against McCain and the lobbyists who work in the Republican campaign are nothing but a waste of time, and it would be much better focus its economic plan around the few proposals that try to offer solutions for everything.

A report distributed by two experts in research, Stan Greenberg and James Carville, the strategist behind the election of Clinton in 1992, expressed the same kind of grief. “McCain claimed the mantle of change and defined it in terms that are credible to some voters,” they wrote. “In the absence of a coherent message of change from Obama, many voters are accepting the definition of McCain.”

Overall, the polls show that voters have more confidence in the ability of Obama to lead the economy than McCain. But its advantage over the Republican candidate in that department declined significantly before the financial crisis from worsening, according to the latest survey of the Pew Research Center, completed days before the earthquake of last week.

The worsening of the situation Obama offers a valuable opportunity to reverse this trend, because it tends to increase dissatisfaction with the government and the Republicans. The political analysts generally believe that their initial reaction was better than McCain, but the last few days have also seen the difficulties that both are to deal with the issue.

Obama has sought to take advantage of the crisis the Republicans blaming the problems on Wall Street and linking McCain to the policies of the Bush administration. But his efforts to overcome the fears of the electorate, and it appears as a moderate leader and trusted lead him to express support for all measures adopted by the Bush administration so far to tackle the crisis.

McCain also endorsed the initiatives of the government. But during the week has taken an erratic behavior, first classified as “solid” the fundamentals of the U.S. economy and then printing a populist tone of his speeches. McCain blamed the “ambition” of Wall Street by the crisis and called for the resignation of the authorities responsible for monitoring the capital market.

The American voters can better examine the differences between the two candidates next Friday, when Obama and McCain face is the first of three debates that will be made in the final straight of the season. “Neither of the two candidates is very consistent on the issue of the economy,” he said last week Neil Newhouse, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, a company that searches for the Republicans.