Obama holds firm lead over McCain as battle for White House nears conclusion

The battle for the US presidency entered its final hours Monday, with polls showing Barack Obama holding a solid lead in his historic quest to become the first black US president while rival John McCain grasped for a last-minute upset.

On the last day of his 21month campaign for the White House, Obama told supporters in Jacksonville,Florida,he could win the longest, most expensive US presidential contest in history but only with their support.

"That's how we're gonna change this country – with your help," he told the crowd, amid chants of "O-bam-a, O-bam-a." "And that's why we can't afford to slow down, sit back, or let up, one minute, or one second in the next 24 hours … Not now. Not when so much is at stake."

McCain meanwhile was racing through seven states in a last campaign swing that ends Tuesday morning in a bid to persuade undecided voters that he, not his rival, was more qualified to lead the world's most powerful nation.

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24 hours left: Obama sees ‘righteous wind’

White House rivals Barack Obama and John McCain Sunday hurled themselves into a Herculean final 48 hours of campaigning before their date with destiny in the US presidential election.

Mr Obama on Sunday was on a three-city tour of Ohio — a crucial state for both the front-running Democrat and his Republican opponent after it decided the 2004 election in favour of President George W. Bush.

Mr McCain, following his own two-day bus odyssey around the rust-belt state, was stepping up the pace with his first midnight rally of the campaign, in Florida, following events in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Entering the electrifying campaign’s final weekend, Mr Obama on Saturday promised a “new politics for a new time” and said he had a “righteous wind” at his back as he pursues his quest to become America’s first black President.

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Obama not closing racial divide: poll

Americans are sharply divided by race ahead of the first presidential election in which a black candidate will represent a major party, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed on Tuesday,

The poll found that blacks and whites hold vastly different views of Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat who would be the first black president, and are also divided on the state of race relations in the United States, the newspaper reported.

In the survey, 83 percent of blacks had a favorable opinion of Obama, compared with 31 percent of white voters.

Obama will face John McCain, a white Republican senator from Arizona, in the November 4 presidential election.

On the status of race relations, 59 percent of black respondents thought they were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites who thought the same way.

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,796 adults showed that 39 percent of blacks said there had been no real progress in recent years in getting rid of racial discrimination. Only 17 percent of whites said the same thing.

Twenty-seven percent of whites said too much had been made of problems facing black people, while half of blacks said not enough had been made of racial barriers faced by black people.

The poll was conducted July 7-14 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found Obama leading McCain by 50 percent to 42 percent among registered voters nationwide. The poll also had Obama with a 19-point lead over McCain on the economy, the issue topping the list of voter concerns.

The poll of 1,119 adults and 971 registered voters was conducted July 10 through 13. The results had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

King still roils U.S. politics 40 years after death

Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death in a racially charged assassination, the civil rights leader is still roiling American politics.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain have both come to Memphis to mark King's April 4, 1968, death and try to shore up support among black voters attracted to Democrat Barack Obama.

Both have some fence-mending to do among African Americans, and both are expected to give speeches and appear at an NBC News event to talk about King's leadership role in the 1960s movement against segregation.

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president and is getting overwhelming support for his candidacy from black voters, will mark the holiday but will do it in North Dakota, where he will address the state's Democratic convention.

He was invited to the NBC event but could not attend due to a prior commitment, his campaign said.

Clinton, flying overnight from California and due to arrive before dawn, was accused of injecting race into the campaign when her husband, President Bill Clinton, was viewed as denigrating Obama in the South Carolina primary in January.

Clinton, who would be the first woman to win the White House, is scrambling to try to win the Democratic presidential nomination from Obama in what increasing looks like a difficult battle for her. Obama or Clinton will face McCain in the November election.

WORK TO DO

McCain has some work to do to improve his standing among black voters. He skipped a Republican campaign debate last September that focused on African-American issues.

And Democrats have been pointing out that Arizona Sen. McCain, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted in 1983 against creating a federal holiday marking King's birthday.

The holiday was approved by a 338-90 vote and President Ronald Reagan signed it into law.

McCain told reporters this week that he had "learned that this individual was a transcendent figure in American history" and deserved to be honored.

He is to speak to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at a civil rights museum built at the old Lorraine Motel where King was gunned down.

Obama, on the other hand, has been criticized by revelations about some of the sermons given by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Obama's Chicago church.

Wright, who has since retired, used inflammatory rhetoric from the pulpit, saying "God Damn America" as he railed against the country's history of racism.

Obama gave a well-received speech on race to try to allay concerns about why he sat in the pew all those years as Wright made outrageous statements.

Since those sermons came to light, some of Obama's supporters have suggested the Clinton campaign has been playing the race card against Obama.

This came up after Clinton said Wright would not be her pastor because of what he had said.

The McCain camp has declined to inject itself into the Wright controversy.

Hillary wins New Hampshire

US Senator Hillary Clinton claimed a come-from-behind victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary late Tuesday, edging out her Senate colleague, Barack Obama, after placing third in the Iowa caucuses.

Flanked by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter Chelsea, the New York senator told supporters she "found her own voice" in the five days since her third-place showing in Iowa, and promised them "we are in it for the long run."

"Now let's give America the kind of comeback that New Hampshire has just given me," she said.

Solid support from registered Democrats and women were crucial, results from exit polls suggest.

With 72 per cent of precincts reporting, CNN projected Clinton the winner of the first-in-the-nation primary with 39 per cent of the vote to Obama's 36.

Self-styled independents, who made up 43 per cent of all voters polled, said they voted for Obama by a margin of 43 per cent to 31 per cent for Clinton.

But Clinton was ahead of Obama 45 per cent to 34 per cent among those who said they were registered Democrats.

Those voters made up a majority -- 54 per cent -- of all those respondents. Clinton also claimed the majority of women's votes, according to the polling.

That's in contrast to last week's Iowa caucuses, in which Obama surprised observers by stealing the female vote from Clinton. According to the exit polls, Clinton had a sizable lead over Obama among women, 47 per cent to 34 per cent. Analysts say that shift was crucial to the Clinton turnaround.

"If I had a single word, the word would be 'women,' " said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider. "She got the women back."

Meanwhile, US Senator John McCain won the New Hampshire state primary in the race to become the Republican party's presidential candidate.

Despite New Hampshire's comparatively small population, the state carries an importance disproportionate to that size as it is the first state to go to the polls -- rather than caucus -- in the presidential election race.

In exit polls, voters from both parties rated the economy their top issue and the war in Iraq second -- but concerns about illegal immigration rated third among Republicans, while Democrats said health care was just behind Iraq.

In his victory speech Tuesday, McCain made joking reference to a similar speech by Bill Clinton, who coined the term "Comeback Kid" when he did well in New Hampshire as a presidential hopeful.

"I am past the age when I can claim the noun kid ... but tonight we sure showed them what a comeback looks like," he said.

As supporters chanted "Mac is back," McCain said his victory was down to telling the truth even if it was not what voters wanted to hear.

Over the summer many had written off McCain, who had alienated the party's conservative base with his support of a controversial immigration reform bill, and poor fund-raising prompted him to shake up his staff.

Ballots ran low in some polling stations six hours before the last polling stations closed at 8 p.m., indicating a larger-than-expected turnout, representatives of New Hampshire's secretary of state said.

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