AFP

Obama leads McCain by 10 points in new poll



Democrat Barack Obama, propelled forward by mounting economic concerns among Americans, now leads his Republican rival John McCain 53 percent to 43 percent, a new opinion poll showed Monday.



Authors of the ABC News/Washington Post survey said historically, no presidential candidate has been able to come back from an October deficit this large in pre-election polls dating back to 1936.

Nearly nine in 10 registered voters said they were worried about the direction of the national economy while about seven in 10 said they were worried about their own family finances.

Fifty-five percent call the economy the single most important issue in this vote, according to the poll.

In the wake of the banking crisis, just 44 percent of Americans were still confident they will have enough money to carry them through retirement, down from a high of 69 percent three years ago, the survey showed.

It also indicated that voters trust Obama to guide them through these troubled times. Registered voters preferred him over McCain to handle the economy by a 53 percent to 37 percent margin.

A record 90 percent of registered voters now say the country is seriously off on the wrong track, the most since this question first was asked in 1973, the survey indicated.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush’s job approval rating has dropped to a record low of just 23 percent, which is below the lowest of Richard Nixon, forced to resign in 1974 over the Watergate scandal.

Bush’s disapproval rating, meanwhile, has reached 73 percent, according to the poll.

The poll of 1,101 adults, conducted by telephone October 8-11, 2008, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percent.

(Source)