John McCain has beaten much tougher odds than being down in the polls with just days to go before the US presidential election. The former navy fighter pilot and war hero survived five and a half years in Vietnamese prison camps where he was tortured so badly he still cannot raise his arms high enough to comb his hair.
Years later, the Arizona senator pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in US political history when he won the Republican nomination after his campaign ran out of money was nearly scuttled last year.
These days, McCain seems to revel in his underdog status, closing every stump speech with a rousing rallying cry to "fight for what's right for America."
"Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. Now, let's go win this election and get this country moving again." At 72, McCain would be the oldest person ever elected to a first term in the White House, in contrast to his youthful Democratic adversary Barack Obama, 47.
Acutely aware of the pressing generational gap, McCain's campaign has sought to turn his age into an asset by stressing his military experience and devotion to country at a time of two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has also played up his reputation forged during two decades in the Senate as a maverick who has at times been sharply at odds with his party in a bid to shake off the toxic legacy of unpopular President George W. Bush. But McCain, who has said the economy is not his strong point, has so far failed to convince voters that he is the best man to lead the country out of a growing financial crisis.
In the final weeks of the campaign he has tried to cast himself as the defender of the middle class and the American value of rewarding hard work while warning voters that Obama is a free spending, job-killing socialist bent on "spreading the wealth." Known for shooting from the hip and an occasional bad temper, McCain threw a bombshell into the White House race in late August when he chose unknown Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running-mate.
Campaigning on a theme of change from tired old Washington politics, Palin, 44, electrified the party's conservative base which had yet to fully embrace McCain as their candidate. But her star has waned amid fears that she is too inexperienced to be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the world's only superpower, especially since McCain has already had brushes with skin cancer.
Early mutterings that her risky pick was another of McCain's gut-feeling gambles have swelled to more vocal criticism that, in naming Palin, McCain put political ambition, and not country first. McCain first ran for the presidency in 2000 against Bush, but dropped out of the Republican primaries amid a nasty, malicious campaign that alleged he had an illegitimate black child.
But he makes no apologies for the negative attacks his campaign has lobbed against his Democratic rival, including allegations Obama "pals around with terrorists," advocates teaching children about sex before they learn to read and opposed a measure to force doctors to preserve the lives of fetuses which survive botched abortions. John Sidney McCain was born on August 29, 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone - formerly under US jurisdiction - and was raised in the tradition of US military "brats" moving from post to post.
Married to Cindy McCain, a wealthy Arizona beer company heiress, since 1980, McCain has seven children from two marriages, including an adopted daughter from Bangladesh. His first wife, Carol, was disabled in a car accident and McCain admits that his "wandering" led to their divorce.
McCain is opposed to any use of torture by the United States in its "war on terror" and has angered his party by working with Democrats on campaign finance reform, attacking pork-barrel projects and criticising how Bush handled the war in Iraq. But in many other areas, he remains a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, opposing abortion, gay marriage and stricter gun control laws and voting with the Bush administration 90 percent of the time.
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