Latest Polls Predict Tight Races in Nevada and South Carolina

Voters in the American West and South will get their first chance tomorrow to have a say in the tightest and most chaotic race for the White House in decades from which no clear front runner has yet emerged.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, according to the latest polls, are in a virtual dead heat in Nevada, which holds its caucuses tomorrow for both Democrats and Republicans.

Pollster, which tracks all the polls, shows Obama eating into Clinton's lead. A Reuters/Zogby poll in Nevada, carried out between Tuesday and Thursday and published today, put Clinton on 42%, Obama on 37% and Edwards 12%.

South Carolina, where the Republicans have been engaged in an acrimonious contest that has invoked God and the Confederate flag, holds its primary tomorrow for Republican voters.

The Democratic primary in the state is next Saturday.

Polls show John McCain and Mike Huckabee rising, leaving Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson trailing. A Reuters/Zogby poll in South Carolina, also carried out between Tuesday and Thursday and published today, puts McCain on 29%, Huckabee 22%, Romney 15% and Thompson 13%.

South Carolina has long been the testing ground for any Republican White House hopeful. The winner of the last six primaries has gone on to become the Republican nominee.

But Romney, whose Mormonism has gone down badly among Christian evangelicals in the state, virtually conceded defeat yesterday by pulling out of South Carolina and heading for Nevada.

Although the western state does not carry the same resonance for Republicans as South Carolina, Romney has a substantial poll lead there.

Thompson could be forced to quit the contest if he loses in South Carolina, though he insisted today he would not.

The Confederate flag was revived as a campaign issue by Huckabee, who said: "You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag."

The flag flew over the state capitol building until 2000 when, after a heated debate, it was removed to another part of the grounds, though with a stipulation to placate diehard supporters that it should not be flown lower than 30ft.

Huckabee's comments were aimed at McCain, who called in 2000 for the removal of the flag from the state capitol building.

Huckabee, a Baptist preacher appealing to Christian evangelicals and right-wingers, also today defended his call for the constitution to be amended to bring it more into line with the word of God.

McCain, who lost the Michigan primary last week partly because of blunt comments about jobs and the economy, has tried to rectify his mistake in recent days, concentrating on the economy and sounding more optimistic about job creation.

In Nevada, Clinton, Obama and Edwards have been involved in a battle that has been dominated by trade unions, who are powerful in the state but are divided over who to support.

The courts have also been dragged in, eventually ruling in favor of caucuses being held in casinos to allow workers there to participate.

The Democratic candidates will switch to the South on Sunday to begin battle for the critical African-American vote.

Obama will achieve an early advantage, having been invited to speak Sunday morning at the Ebenezer Baptist church, in Atlanta, Georgia.

It promises to be an emotional occasion, making an address on the eve of Martin Luther King Day at the church where he preached and where his funeral was held.

Obama will be joined on Monday by rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards to mark the holiday with a march to the state capitol building in Columbia, whose grounds contain a statue to one of the South's leading segregationists, former governor Ben Tillman, and where the Confederate flag, a symbol of hate for African-Americans, still flies.