Growing doubts weaken Obama, polls show

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By S.A. Miller and Stephen Dinan

Growing doubts among white working-class and independent voters blunted the momentum of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential run in recent days, leaving him in a tight contest with Republican candidate Sen. John McCain, pollsters say.

"His bubble hasn't burst, but it's leaking a little bit," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "It is not massive. It is incremental, but we've seen it across the board in all of these states, that [Mr. McCain] is doing better among white voters, especially white voters without college educations."

Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat, led by double digits earlier this summer but now barely edges out the Arizona Republican in most national polls. A Gallup daily tracking poll released Tuesday showed Mr. Obama with a four-point advantage but, for the first time since June, losing the battle for independents 43 percent to 40 percent.

"Obama moved from a fascinating phenomena to a guy who could become president and now he has got to answer the question of is he ready to be president," said John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International, whose latest poll this week gave Mr. McCain a one-percentage-point lead.

Mr. Zogby said racial prejudice is clearly behind some of the defections from Mr. Obama and said Mr. McCain has made gains among conservatives, women and young voters, and now leads among Catholics - a group Mr. Obama struggled to win over in a grueling primary battle against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

After months of glowing press coverage and the chance to define himself, Mr. Obama has faced tougher times in the past few weeks. The McCain campaign has run an ad comparing the Democrat to lightweight celebrities, and pollsters said Mr. McCain has benefited from his proposal to expand offshore oil drilling.

Deepening Mr. Obama's woes, the appetite for negative information appears to be large. The Associated Press reported that three new anti-Obama books were among the top 20 best-sellers on Amazon.com's list on Tuesday, despite little critical attention or mainstream media coverage.

Seeking to counter some of the loss of support, the Obama campaign announced that it would deploy Mrs. Clinton to Nevada and Florida later this month. She won both Nevada's caucuses and Florida's primary.

The Obama campaign said the candidate would continue to build support throughout the electorate with plans to address high gas prices and the economic crunch, issues that have burst to the fore the election.

"Senator Obama is going to keep talking about his plan to give middle-class families a $1,000 rebate funded by a windfall profits tax on the oil companies," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said, adding that Mr. McCain took $2 million in contributions from the oil industry and proposes lower corporate tax rates that would benefit big oil companies.