This article is more than 12 years old

This article is more than 12 years old

Barack Obama is opening a clear lead over John McCain after polls at the weekend showed the public overwhelmingly awarding Friday night's presidential debate to the Democratic candidate.

The polls suggest McCain did not benefit from suspending his campaign and flying to Washington last week to help deal with the financial crisis.

The gap could see an increase in more personal - and ugly - attacks on Obama. An early sign of that came yesterday in a row over a dead soldier's bracelet. Obama was accused of wearing the bracelet against the wishes of the soldier's mother.

With five weeks until the presidential election, Obama appears to have broken the impasse that had seen the two in a dead heat in polls over the past month.

A USA Today poll, published yesterday, showed 45% of those questioned felt Obama had done better in the debate than McCain, who registered 34%. The public view is at odds with the media, which overwhelmingly judged it to be a draw.

Other polls, including the Rasmussen tracking poll, showed voters drifting towards Obama. The Rasmussen poll put Obama on 50% and McCain on 44%, which would give the Democratic candidate a landslide victory.

McCain returned to the campaign trail yesterday alongside his vice-presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, for the first time since suspending his campaign last Wednesday.

In a speech in Ohio, McCain stuck to his main message of whether Obama was fit to be president, saying the Democratic candidate had always voted with the party and had shown no sign of putting his country first. He also accused him of lying about tax plans in Friday's debate.

As the election nears, the two campaigns are firing back more claims and denials, and at increasing speed. Obama's team's denial on tax was out before McCain had completed his speech.

If Obama maintains his lead, the Republicans are almost certain to step up personal attacks on him. In a column for the New York Times yesterday, the rightwing commentator William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, offered suggestions on how McCain could win that included raising again Obama's links with figures such as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the controversial cleric.

An early sign that the campaign could turn more personal was yesterday's row over Obama's possession of the bracelet of a US soldier killed in Iraq. Stories quickly appeared on the internet suggesting the mother objected to Obama exploiting her son's death.

During the debate, McCain said a soldier's mother had given him a bracelet. "I've got a bracelet too, from Sergeant ... from the mother of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek, given to me in Green Bay," said Obama.

The mother, Tracy Jopek, told AP yesterday she was "ecstatic" that Obama had mentioned her son. "I don't understand how people can take that and turn it into some garbage on the internet," she said.

She had asked Obama in February not to mention her son, but she felt it was appropriate on Friday in response to McCain.

Obama and McCain have established what they refer to as truth squads, each offering quick rebuttals to what they see as incorrect claims.