Obama ahead of Clinton - poll

2008-01-07 12:25

New Hampshire - Barack Obama built a double-digit opinion poll lead ahead of Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, threatening another ominous blow to Hillary Clinton's White House hopes.

The former first lady's once iron-clad lead in the northeastern state appeared to evaporate as voters flocked to the 46-year-old senator from Illinois, riding the wave of his stunning Iowa caucuses victory last week.

Republican White House hopefuls meanwhile squabbled in another contentious debate, though the party's New Hampshire front-runner Senator John McCain, appeared to escape any damage before Tuesday's poll.

Forced to go onto the attack, Clinon warned Obama's soaring eloquence, masked a lack of achievement, and told Democrats they should "nominate and elect a doer, not a talker".

But in duelling rallies across the northeastern state, Obama pressed home his mantra of hope and change, and accused Clinton, 60, of stooping to desperate tactics.

"What we're seeing is the last throes of Washington resisting change ... twisting facts, distorting people's records, twisting words," said Obama, who hopes to become America's first black president.

Going all the way

A USA Today/Gallup poll gave Obama a 13-point lead over the senator from New York, while a CNN/WMUR tracking poll showed Obama leading Clinton by ten points.

The previous edition of both polls had the two rivals tied.

For the first time, also, more New Hampshire voters saw Obama as the Democrat most able to beat a Republican rival in the race for the White House, according to the CNN/WMUR poll, which gave Obama a 42% to 31% edge over Clinton on "electability".

"The Iowa caucus results have convinced growing numbers of Granite State voters that Obama can really go all the way," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

Clinton fought a pitched battle to keep Obama from snatching the primary, after he trounced her in Iowa last week.

"There is a big difference between talking and acting, between promising and delivering," Senator Clinton, who would make history by becoming the first woman president, told a rally of canvassers.

She also took a swipe at Russian President Vladimir Putin, riffing off President George W Bush's famous comment that he had got a sense of the Russian leader's "soul" in their first meeting.

"This is the president that looked into the soul of Putin, I could have told him, he was a KGB agent, by definition he doesn't have a soul, I mean this is a waste of time, right, this is nonsense," Clinton said at a campaign rally.

Clashing rivals

Two days before the New Hampshire primaries, bad feelings simmered in the latest debate between Republicans, as Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses, clashed with Mitt Romney, the man he vanquished.

"You know, Mike, you make up facts, faster than you talk and that's saying something," the former Massachussets governor quipped as Huckabee rejected an attack on taxes hikes when he was Arkansas governor.

McCain, who has also taken a drubbing in Romney's ad blitz, appeared to remain above the fray, extolling his past military record as giving him experience in dealing with Osama bin-Laden and other terrorist threats.

- AFP