REPUBLICAN John McCain’s accusations that Democrat Barack Obama was seeking a “socialist redistribution of wealth” seem to be paying off.

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds the candidates running nearly dead-even less than two weeks before the presidential election.

The poll results, released yesterday, gave Obama 44percent of the vote and McCain 43percent, a possible indication that conservative voters were drifting back to the Republican candidate. The same poll three weeks ago found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead, lifted by Americans’ anxiety over the slumping US economy – the top issue gripping voters in the race for the White House.

With the contest still volatile, the new AP-GfK head-to-head result is a departure from some, but not all, recent national polls. Obama and McCain were essentially tied in the latest George Washington University Battleground Poll, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Obama up by nine percentage points, while a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll had the margin at 11 points.

State-by-state polling shows Obama within a few electors of the 270 needed to win. The nationwide popular vote does not count for victory in the US system, which depends instead on an electoral college where members are apportioned according to state population.

McCain has been pounding the Obama tax plan, which proposes a reversal of President George W Bush’s tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy. The additional revenue, Obama contends, would offset tax breaks he wants to give to 95 percent of Americans who earn less than R2.8million (250000) annually. “Apparently, as my opponent sees it, there’s a strict limit to your earnings as well, and it’s for the politicians to decide. The proper amount of wealth is not what you can earn, but what government will let you keep,” McCain told supporters in New Hampshire, a traditionally anti-tax state he hopes to woo to his side.

Yesterday, Obama visited Indianapolis before flying to Hawaii to visit his gravely ill grandmother. His running mate, Joe Biden, was in North Carolina where the Democrats are making a serious play for the traditionally Republican state. — Sapa-AP