The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Washington

Barack Obama leads John McCain in five of eight crucial battleground states one week before the US presidential election, with Senator McCain ahead in two states and Florida dead even, according to a series of Reuters/ Zogby polls released yesterday.

Senator Obama held steady with a five-point lead over Senator McCain among likely US voters in a separate Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national tracking poll, the same advantage he held on Sunday. The national telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

Republican Senator McCain is struggling to defend about a dozen states won by President George W Bush in 2004, including all eight of the states surveyed over the last three days.

Breakthroughs by Senator Obama in any of those states could move him close to or above the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the White House on November 4. Senator Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, held narrow leads over Senator McCain in Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio and Nevada, most within the margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. Senator McCain had a solid 10-point lead in West Virginia and a 6-point edge in Indiana.

The two candidates were tied at 47 per cent in Florida, the largest of the battlegrounds with 27 electoral votes and the state that decided the disputed 2000 election.

Most polls show Senator Obama comfortably ahead in all of the states won by Democrat John Kerry in 2004, but the Reuters/Zogby polls show Senator McCain in serious danger in several states won by Mr Bush.

"If Obama holds the Kerry states, he is in line now to get enough electoral votes to win the White House," Zogby said, noting Senator McCain faces a difficult fight in a handful of states where Republicans have a long history of success.

"These polls are a measure of what an uphill battle Senator McCain faces to win," Zogby said. "These are all Republican states and McCain has a very tough challenge, but they are all close."

Meanwhile, Democrat Barack Obama entered the final seven days of the dramatic presidential campaign exhorting supporters to fight to the end to defeat Republican John McCain and remake the nation. The White House rivals were to hold competing rallies Tuesday in the rust-belt state of Pennsylvania before splitting, with McCain fighting a rearguard action in North Carolina and Obama on the attack in Virginia .

Despite holding a robust poll lead nationally and in battleground states, Obama, 47, warned against complacency as he prepared to air a costly 30-minute "infomercial" on major US networks Wednesday evening.