US News

OBAMA UP BY 11

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama has opened up a stunning 11-point lead over John McCain in the latest Gallup Poll – his largest edge of the entire campaign.

Obama, whose support has shot up in several national polls since the economic meltdown started dominating the news, now tops McCain 52 to 41 percent. That’s the most support Obama has registered in the survey, taken before Thursday night’s debate.

Obama hasn’t relinquished the lead in the poll since he went ahead in late September, and he has trailed only during two periods since the start of the summer.

Obama’s new high-water mark comes at a time when he has seized substantial leads in many of the battleground states that will determine the winner.

He leads McCain 52-42 percent in a new SurveyUSA poll in Wisconsin, a 2004 John Kerry state that McCain has made one of his top targets after pulling out of Michigan last week.

Obama’s rise has coincided with massive spending on the TV airwaves, where he is relentlessly exploiting a money advantage. The Democratic nominee has outspent McCain and the Republican National Committee by nearly $7 million nationwide over the last week, according to data assembled by the Wisconsin Advertising Project.

Obama more than doubled McCain’s spending in Florida, $2.2 million to $659,000, while outspending him 8-to-1 in North Carolina, $1.2 million to $148,000 last week.

Obama had a $500,000 spending edge in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, McCain committed a slip of the tongue today by confusing fellow citizens with POWs. “Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners and the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent,” he said in Bethlehem, Pa.

And in an interview on Fox News alongside Sarah Palin, McCain called for Obama to “reveal all the details” of his relationship with Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, saying it was “much more” than Obama has described.