Obama speeches shift focus away from race

CHARLESTON, W.Va., March 21 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has started moving his campaign away from race, which caused a slip in recent polls, and onto other issues.

Polls indicate controversial racial remarks by Obama's one-time minister may have led to a lost in the popular polls, The New York Times reported Friday.

A Gallup Poll showed Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., leadingObama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination for the first time since early February. Obama leads Clinton in the number of pledged delegates to the Denver convention in August.

In the Gallup survey of 1,209 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters taken before Obama gave his speech Tuesday, 49 percent favored Clinton while 42 percent favored Obama. The poll, taken from March 14-18, has a sampling error of 3 percentage points.

Obama's campaign has been tracking reaction to the Philadelphia speech to help determine whether he can move to other issues, such as the economic costs of the war in Iraq.

"When you're spending over $50 to fill up your car," Obama said at a rally in Charleston, W.Va., "you're paying a price for this war. When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you're paying a price for this war."