Saddam and the midterm countdown

Bush makes a statement on Saddam.
Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/GettyThey call it the October surprise - that unexpected last-minute event that can change the course of a November American election. Ever since Nixon convinced the South Vietnamese to pull out of negotiations in the dying moments of the 1968 presidential election, pundits have acknowledged the October surprise as the X factor that could throw their predictions off course.

This year it may have come late.

News that Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death came too late for the pollsters but conveniently enough for the Republicans it arrived just as they started their infamous push to galvanise their base in the final 72 hours before the polls open.

The timing is more than suspicious. Whether this was deliberately engineered to boost Republican electoral fortunes or not is an important question - to tamper with a nominally foreign judiciary (given that the US appointed the judiciary it can hardly be considered independent) for domestic political ends is serious stuff.

But ultimately, the lasting relevance will be whether the sentencing, engineered or not, will have an effect on voting intentions.