On Sunday, John McCain held his last "town hall meeting" in Peterborough, New Hampshire, hoping for a miracle to propel him to victory both in that state and in the country. But, as Eliza Doolittle's father says in "My Fair Lady" (Pygmalion), "Not Bloody Likely!"

McCain's campaign staff pointed to victories by the Arizona senator in the 2000 and 2008 New Hampshire Republican primaries as evidence that Granite State voters like their candidate. And they pointed with hope to the last pre-election polls in January's New Hampshire Democratic primary, which showed Barack Obama with an average nine-point lead, only to lose to Hillary Clinton by two points less than two days later. McCain's campaign suggests all is not lost, and that there could be another such last-minute swing in New Hampshire, and in the country as a whole.

First, McCain's popularity in the two New Hampshire primaries he won was among Republicans, not the whole electorate. Current polls show that he is still popular among those Republicans, but that he is not so popular among other voters - and will probably lose the state by somewhere near a double digit margin.

Second, the last minute swing that deprived Obama of an expected primary victory in New Hampshire happened among voters who were quite torn among the Democratic candidates, most of whom - especially Obama and Clinton - were seen in very positive terms. In its last pre-election poll in January, the UNH Survey Center found 21 percent of Democratic voters still completely undecided about whom to support. Over the last 48 hours of the campaign, a media blitz that appeared to favor Clinton - by focusing on her emotional moment and President Clinton's criticism of Obama's "fairytale" candidacy - helped persuade the undecided voters to go for Hillary Clinton.

Today, however, the UNH Survey Center reports that only about 5 percent of voters statewide are still undecided. Unlike the primary, the policy differences between the two candidates are immense, and of course McCain and Obama are affiliated with different political parties - making the choice less difficult than voting in a primary election. The chances that the latest polls in New Hampshire are reporting the wrong winner are miniscule.

Likewise, in the country as a whole, the consensus of the last major media polls shows Obama winning both the popular vote and the electoral vote by decisive margins. I've long criticized the polls for their widely divergent results during the campaign, because of the way they manipulate undecided voters in their samples to make a choice. But on the eve of the election, the vast majority of voters have finally made up their minds. There is little likelihood of major swings in the last 24 hours before Election Day.

True, a few polls show a modest tightening of the race, but many others do not. And even those showing a smaller margin still have Obama up by 5 or more percentage points. The overall average of the polls is for an Obama victory by about 7 percentage points. If McCain were to emerge the popular or electoral vote winner, that should definitely cause concern - not that the polls were so uniformly wrong, but that something went terribly wrong with the election.