Washington - Sixteen years after "it's the economy, stupid" became a slogan of Bill Clinton's successful presidential campaign, this year's presidential election has witnessed a resurgence of that idea.

With the war in Iraq and the wider threat of terrorism subsiding from the minds of many in the United States, the sputtering US economy has become the top issue of this presidential election season.

According to a CNN opinion poll this month, 48 per cent of voters said their decision in November would turn on which candidate has the best economic plan, nearly 30 percentage points higher than any other issue.

That dynamic is unlikely to change before the November 4 general election. Most economic forecasts predict that sluggish US growth and high petrol prices will remain until well into 2009.

"This election to me looks a lot like 1992," said John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

This year's Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain have a challenge in convincing voters they are best able to turn the US economy around. Neither presidential hopeful can claim to have run a business or managed an economy.

McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who has relied mostly on his foreign policy credentials, famously admitted the economy is not his strong suit. Obama was only elected to the US Senate in 2004 and has a background in the legal profession.

Irons said the winning candidate will have to show he can best "empathize with ordinary Americans" and create sound economic policies. McCain and Obama have begun flooding local airwaves with ads that hammer the other's credentials and play up their own middle- class relief plans.

Polls suggest both still have some convincing to do. Only 28 per cent of voters have confidence in Obama's economic plan, and only 17 per cent have faith in McCain's, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last month.

Both candidates did enter the White House race with a reputation for bipartisanship and novel ideas - McCain as a long-time maverick in his own party and Obama a self-proclaimed "change agent."

But many of the policy clashes and campaign rhetoric have so far fallen along traditional party lines: taxes, government spending and trade.

"It's deja vu all over again," said Roberton Williams, a research associate of the independent think tank Urban Institute.

McCain favours expanding free trade deals, maintaining lower taxes and promises to rein in government spending, while regularly slamming Obama for planning to raise taxes on all income brackets.

Obama's key attack has been to tie McCain with the economic policies of President George W Bush. Obama supports raising taxes on wealthier Americans, tax cuts for the middle and poorer classes and takes a cautious approach on trade deals to protect US workers.

Some issues stand out as unique: surging energy prices and a housing crisis have thrown a wrench into the usual economic discussion around election time. But even here, McCain and Obama's answers have formed part of a classic right-left divide.

McCain flew out to an oil platform Tuesday to highlight his call for more US oil exploration to lower energy costs, and has promoted individual responsibility when it comes to managing the housing crisis. Obama has proposed a 1,000-dollar "energy rebate" for families and pledged relief for homeowners that were "hoodwinked" into taking on mortgages they could not afford.

In short, McCain has focussed on supply-side solutions to the economic crisis, while Obama hopes to stimulate demand with more social and spending programmes, Robertson said.

Obama shows "a little more fiscal responsibility, but a little less concern about whether people at the top end are going to be the drivers of the economy," he said.

With the backdrop of a war in Iraq and resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, the debate has also taken on a foreign tilt as candidates link the poor economic data to security issues that they believe work in their favour.

Obama has regularly said that 10 billion dollars a month spent on the war in Iraq could better be invested in domestic programmes. McCain, who takes credit for a troop surge that has reduced violence in Iraq, has called for a similar "economic surge" to boost US job growth.

Both McCain and Obama have also linked consumers' pain at the petrol pump to the need for greater energy independence, which would mean security from hostile nations that currently fuel the country's energy needs.

"We are long passed the time when a domestic economy can be treated in isolation from the geo-political environment," Irons said. (dpa)