Lead widens to 10-points as Democrat gains ground on McCain

Washington, Wednesday

Democrat Barack Obama has expanded his national lead over Republican John McCain in the US presidential race to 10 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released today.

Obama leads McCain 52 per cent to 42 per cent among likely US voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, up from an eight-point advantage for Obama yesterday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

"Obama just keeps growing, he has expanded his lead among almost every major voting group," said pollster John Zogby.

"McCain seems to be out of steam for the moment."

The 10-point lead was the first time Obama’s advantage over McCain, an Arizona senator, reached double-digits in the poll. Obama’s lead had floated between two and six points in the more than two weeks of polling until stretching to eight points yesterday.

swing votes

Obama made gains with two key swing voting blocs. His advantage with independent voters grew to a whopping 27 points from 15 points and his edge with women voters grew to 16 points from 13. McCain narrowly trails Obama by two percentage points among me. The poll, taken Sunday through yesterday, showed independent Ralph Nader, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney and Libertarian Bob Barr each registering one per cent support.

Meanwhile, Obama is bouncing from one patch of Republican turf to another this week. Virginia is his stomping grounds today, as he continues his assault on McCain’s economic proposals while also introducing national security differences into the final-stretch mix.

Powell effect

The endorsement over the weekend of Obama by long time Republican Colin Powell, the former secretary of state under President Bush, gives the Democrat an opening to go on the offensive on foreign affairs.

The topic is generally considered his weakest against McCain, but Powell’s backing undercut McCain’s perceived dominance.

Obama arrived in Virginia yesterday night after spending two full days campaigning in another GOP state, Florida.

At boisterous Miami rally with his wife, Michelle, Obama seized on that, as well as a report that a top McCain economic advisor said the Arizona senator prefers to first evaluate the impact $700 billion financial rescue plan passed earlier this month.

"I’ve got news for Senator McCain: Hardworking families who’ve been hard hit by this economic crisis — folks who can’t pay their mortgages or their medical bills or send their kids to college — they can’t afford to wait and see. They can’t afford to go to the back of the line behind CEOs and Wall Street banks," Obama told a crowd of more than 30,000 that filled a waterside park.

—Associated Press