Obama makes inroads into McCain territory

Fayetteville, North Carolina: Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday pursued his audacious hunt for votes in America's conservative heartland after rallying monster crowds in the Republican "red" state of Missouri with a rousing call for change.

Just over a fortnight before the November 4 elections, the White House hopeful was to campaign in North Carolina - which last voted for a Democratic presidential contender in 1976, but is now a toss-up state.

And Obama's camp was hoping for a landmark endorsement as NBC prepared to air an interview on its political show Meet the Press with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican military grandee, on Sunday.

For the liberal left, Powell was tarnished by his role in promoting the US invasion of Iraq. But it would be a stern slap to Republican John McCain's candidacy if the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff backed Obama.

McCain, fighting a rearguard offensive as his poll numbers sag, insisted that Obama's economic plan would "kill" job creation as the US weathers its worst financial crisis in decades.

"At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders, who so admire my opponent, are upfront about their objectives," he said on Saturday, as his campaign bombarded voters' telephones with "robo-calls" portraying Obama as a closet radical.

Astonishing numbers

But the Democrat, who is riding high in national and state polls, was buoyed by the astonishing numbers he attracted on Saturday in Missouri, which voted for Republican President George W. Bush in the last two elections. The day's first crowd in St Louis numbered at least 100,000 - Obama's biggest yet in the US.

An evening rally in Kansas City, Missouri's other big metropolis, attracted more than 75,000 supporters.

The 47-year-old candidate, bidding to be the nation's first black president, said the enormous turnouts were proof "the winds are blowing for change across America", as he bids to flip red states into Democratic "blue".

"They're blowing in Kansas, they're blowing in Missouri, they're blowing in North Carolina, they're blowing in Virginia, they're blowing in Ohio," Obama said, reeling off a list of states that all backed Bush in 2004 and 2000.

Obama's lead over McCain in the presidential race dropped to 3 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released yesterday.

Obama leads McCain by 48 to 45 per cent among likely US voters, down 1 percentage point from Saturday. The four-day tracking poll has a margin of error of 2.9 points.

Donations: $150m raised last month

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raised more than $150 million (Dh550.5 million) for his campaign in September, breaking the record he set the previous month, his campaign said yesterday.

Obama's prodigious fundraising has been a key in the race against Republican Senator John McCain, allowing Obama to blanket the air waves with advertisements in the run-up to the November 4 election.

The Obama campaign said it added 632,000 new donors in September to bring the total to 3.1 million. It said the average donation for the month was less than $100.

With more than $150 million in September, Obama more than doubled the $66 million he brought in for August, which had been a record. Unlike McCain, Obama, an Illinois senator, chose not to accept public funding for his campaign, freeing him to raise millions privately.

- Reuters