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WASHINGTON: The US White House race tightened Saturday after new
opinion polls suggested Barack Obama’s shine was wearing off and
Republican John McCain was gaining ground in several important
states.
Some 200,000 people in Berlin greeted the
Illinois Democratic senator like a rock star as he continued his
weeklong foreign tour visiting crucial hotspots and important
allies, demonstrating his foreign policy credentials in the race to
be the next US president.
But voter polls inside the United States showed
McCain chipping away at Obama’s lead in the race, which remains
between one and six points.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published
Wednesday showed 55 percent of American voters considered Obama the
riskiest choice for US president, while just 35 percent said the
same of McCain.
The same poll found that 58 percent of voters
identified more closely with McCain’s values and background,
against 47 percent who said the same of Obama.
A separate study published Thursday by
Quinnipiac University showed McCain has gained ground in several key
battleground states, and has overtaken Obama in Colorado.
The survey showed McCain close on Obama’s
heels in Michigan and Minnesota, and other polls have put McCain
ahead in some key states usually considered Democratic bastions,
such as New Hampshire.
“Well, I do understand it,” Obama said in an
interview with NBC news, about the number of people viewing him as a
risky choice.
“I’m new to the scene. John McCain’s been
around 25, 30 years in public life. I have just recently emerged in
terms of our national politics. And so it’s not surprising that
people would say that,” Obama said.
His fast journey to Iraq, Israel and
Afghanistan, and then stops in Germany, France and, on Saturday,
Britain, is aimed at showing he has presidential skills, meeting top
leaders and pressing the Europeans to keep their troops in
Afghanistan.
In an interview with CNN, he insisted he was not
trying to interfere with the official US foreign policy.
But he added that the principle idea he wanted
to communicate in meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Brtish Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, was to make them understand “that we’re going to have to
have a sustained commitment in Afghanistan, that it’s not going to
be a situation where we can do this on the cheap.”
While his reception at each stop on the trip has
been generous, the polls showed his message was having less impact
among some segments of the US voter population.
“To the extent that he’s acting as if he’s
already president when the election is over 100 days away, and
everyone expects it will be a very close race, raises questions
about how in touch he is,” said Alex Conant, spokesman for the
Republican National Committee.
“The fact that Obama is out of touch with
voters . . . is certainly something we’ll continue to
reiterate,” Conant added.
McCain’s continues to do well among his main
supporters, white males and people older than 65— groups that are
likely to turn out strongly for the November 4 presidential
election.
Some experts said McCain’s down-home approach,
which he worked on this week while visiting working-class voters and
grocery stores in Pennsylvania and Ohio, seems to be bearing fruit,
especially among American voters whose main concern is the economy
and not the war in Iraq.
“With voters saying that the energy issue is
now more important to their presidential vote than is the war in
Iraq, this group represents an opportunity for the Republicans,”
said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University
Polling Institute.
-- AFP
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