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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania : Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Saturday skipped across Pennsylvania by planes, trains and automobiles, in a breakneck three-day dash to their pivotal next nominating showdown.
The Democratic foes held dueling rallies ahead of Tuesday's primary in the northeastern state, as a new national poll dealt a body blow to Clinton's ebbing White House hopes.
Clinton took a sideswipe at the Illinois senator in her first event, at smalltown firehouse in West Chester, outside Philadelphia.
"This is such an important election," Clinton said, against a backdrop of US flags and fire trucks, as a crowd of about 400 people basked in spring sunshine.
"I didn't want to just show up and give one of these woop-de-doo speeches, just kind of get everybody whipped up ... I want everybody thinking about what we have to do."
She spoke after Obama packed 35,000 people into downtown Philadelphia on Friday night, firing off his trademark soaring rhetoric in a bid for a come-from-behind victory which would be a hammer blow for her campaign.
The Obama team meanwhile attacked Clinton on one of her signature issues, health care, saying in a new campaign ad that her plan would force people to buy insurance, even if they could not afford it.
Clinton hit back, at the third stop of a five-rally campaign day, in York: "Instead of attacking the problem, he chooses to attack my solution," she said.
"I don't think we can just make speeches about this we have to have a plan we actually can implement."
A new Newsweek poll suggested that despite enduring a rocky month, Obama was now pulling away from Clinton in the minds of Democratic voters nationwide.
He leads Clinton by a shock 19 points, 54 percent to 35 percent, among registered Democrats and those who lean Democratic nationwide, in a new Newsweek poll.
The corresponding survey, in March, when Clinton revived her hopes with wins in the Ohio and Texas primaries, had him with a razor-thin 45-44 percent lead.
But a Gallup Daily tracking poll had Clinton leading Obama 46 to 45 percent nationally, the first time the Illinois senator had trailed for over a month.
In Pennsylvania, an average of polls by independent website RealClearPolitics.com shows Clinton leading by nearly six percent, though some recent polling has the race down to a few points.
Analysts, and even prominent Clinton backers, say she needs an emphatic victory over Obama on Tuesday to provide fresh rationale to stay in a race many key party figures believe she has no chance to win.
But Clinton aides Saturday appeared to downplay the chances of a double-digit victory, predicting a "close" race, as they sent 5,000 volunteers onto the streets to chase undecided voters.
A thumping Clinton victory would sow fresh doubts about Obama's viability in a general election, and bolster her claim that only she can win swing states packed with blue-collar voters, which Democrats must win in November.
Clinton was touring Pennsylvania by plane and bus, while in a throwback to more sedate political era, Obama trundled through small towns by train.
Going into Tuesday's pivotal vote, Obama has a significant advantage in the overall race, in both the number of states he has won and the number of pledged delegates and superdelegates to the August convention.
According to RealClearPolitics.com, Obama has a total of 1,648 delegates to Clinton's 1,507.
With both unlikely to reach the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the party's nomination, the race will come down to superdelegates, the nearly 800 party officials who can chose who they like.
Clinton narrowly leads in the superdelegate count, but about 250 have not yet announced who they will support.
- AFP /ls
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