Obama leads McCain in most national polls

Connecticut: Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama widened his lead over Republican John McCain in most national polls and surveys of battleground states as the November 4 American election approaches.

The Illinois senator was up 8 points over presidential rival McCain in an average of 16 polls released during the last week, according to RealClearPolitics.com.

Last week, Obama was up about 6 points.

Obama also has built leads in so-called battleground states including Pennsylvania and Ohio and he has an edge over McCain in some states that were Republican strongholds, such as Virginia and North Carolina.

"He had a great week," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Connecticut. Speaking of McCain, he said, "No one has come from this far back in this little time."

The Gallup daily tracking poll shows Obama up 7 points, nationally, a lead he's maintained throughout the week.

The CBS/New York Times and ABC/Washington Post polls put Obama up 13 points and 9 points respectively, while the latest Newsweek poll shows Obama leading McCain by 12 points.

In North Carolina, which has voted for the Republican candidate in nine of the last 10 elections, Obama and McCain are in a dead heat. A poll by Rasmussen Reports has McCain ahead by 2 percentage points and another by Charlotte television station WSOC has Obama in front by the same margin.

In Virginia, four recent polls put Obama in the lead, by an average margin of 7 points.

In Colorado, Obama has taken a 12-point lead over McCain, according to a Rocky Mountain News/CBS4 News poll released late on Saturday.

The RealClearPolitics.com average of four Colorado polls shows Obama ahead by 7 points.

Obama leads by 11 points in Pennsylvania, 6 points in Ohio and 2 in Florida, according to the Realclearpolitics.com average of polls in those states.