Obama Catching Up With Clinton But Pair Adopt Polite Approach in Televised Debate

Barack Obama is narrowing the poll gap between him and Hillary Clinton with only days left until Super Tuesday, when about half the country is eligible to vote.

The latest Gallup nationwide poll put him on 39%, four points behind Clinton, who held an 11-point lead last week.

But the poll does not take account of the latest developments, including the televised debate between the two on Thursday night. The first two days of the polling took place before the exit of John Edwards on Wednesday.

Clinton spent all day in the key Super Tuesday state of California yesterday and is planning to do the same today. Obama too started the day in California before heading to New Mexico.

Clinton has a good network, and the support of the party establishment, in California, New York, New Jersey and the other key states, and has long held significant poll leads in those states.

Obama yesterday picked up the support of MoveOn.org, the liberal blog site that brings together many of the party's activists and is a focal point for the anti-war movement, and California's service union which has 600,000 members and which had been backing Edwards.

In the televised debate, Clinton and Obama, both conscious of the damage done to their campaigns and the Democratic party by their exchange of barbs in the last debate more than a week ago, were polite towards one another.

Both opted for safety first, with Clinton not wanting to endanger her poll lead with a gaffe and Obama not wanting to risk the momentum building behind him.

Obama stressed he had been opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning, unlike Clinton who voted for it in the senate. She probably scored over him on domestic issues, such as health, on which she demonstrated a stronger grasp of detail.

They both gave polite replies when asked about whether they would be prepared to unite to fight the November election as a team, with one as the presidential candidate and one the vice-president.

"Well, obviously there's a big difference between those two," Obama joked. Pressed further, he said: "Hillary would be on anybody's shortlist."

But sources in both camps yesterday suggested that there was no real prospect of what many Democrats regard as a "dream team" and that neither would be prepared to accept second best.

With the contest set to be decided on domestic issues rather than foreign policy or security, Obama sent out more than 2m mail shots about his plan to introduce universal health care.

In the Republican race, John McCain is hoping that the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, will help him in that state and that Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, would do the same in that city.

Mitt Romney, still smarting from what he sees as McCain's underhand tactics this week in suggesting Romney advocated withdrawal from Iraq last year, claimed McCain had used Nixon-like tactics.

Romney said he planned to spend "a significant" amount of his estimated $270m on television ads in key states.

McCain, a relative moderate in Republican terms, has been taking a battering from radio talk shows, but the polls suggest this has failed to slow his momentum.