Daily Kos/Research 2000's Obama vs McCain poll, conducted from October 19 to October 21, shows Obama leading McCain by 8 % points — 50 % to 42 % among the likely voters nationally.

Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby's Obama vs McCain poll, conducted from October 19 to October 21, shows Obama leading McCain by 10 % points — 52 % to 42 % among the likely voters nationally.

Investors Business Daily/TIPP's Obama vs McCain poll, conducted from October 18 to October 22, shows Obama leading McCain by 1 % — 45 % to 44 % among the likely voters nationally.

Speaking at James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told the people who packed into an overflow room that the 2008 election represents “a clear choice between the past and the future.” There were about 8,000 people at the soccer field at James Madison, but there wasn’t room for them at the indoor venue where there were 12,000 more people, mainly students too excited to sit.

Republican John McCain has lately been picking on Congressman Barney Frank warn voters about the fiscal dangers that would accompany Barack Obama’s presidency. It appears Frank has found a comfortable home in McCain’s speeches in the campaign’s closing days.

Washington - Less than one week before the US general election, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took centre stage in the campaign Wednesday with a major policy speech on energy, while Democratic rival Barack Obama launched his first television ad directed against Palin.

Palin, running alongside John McCain, promised an "all-of-the- above approach" to end US dependence on foreign energy and encourage the production of domestic sources, focussing on renewables as well as more oil drilling. She slammed Obama for a "long, laboured agenda of inaction" on energy.

McCain has touted Palin, governor of oil and natural-gas rich Alaska since 2006, as a key advisor for energy policy should he make it into the White House.

New York, Oct 29: Realising that the mobile phones text messages are the most apt medium to reach out to the GenNext, the Barack Obama camp is learnt to have devised a novel idea of sending across SMSs giving detailed programmes of the Democratic presidential nominees and their polling booths.

In the states going to early-voting, the messages have already gone out, reported the New York Daily News.

In August too, Obama had used the same medium to inform his supporters that Joe Biden was his running mate.

Almost immediately after beginning her evening speech at Shippensburg University in central Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Sarah Palin attacked Barrack Obama trying to peg him as a “socialist”, using an interview Obama did with Chicago Public Radio in 2001. Palin claimed that Obama - a former constitutional law professor - favors allowing the judiciary to seize property and personal income in order to “spread the wealth around.”