Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain drew large crowds to events in Wisconsin as a new poll showed them leading in their respective races ahead of Tuesday's primary.
About 1,000 Obama supporters shouted his name and chanted "change" at a rally Friday morning in Milwaukee, while police in Oshkosh said as many as 800 people showed up to hear McCain, a couple hundred more than expected.
Illinois Sen. Obama led rival New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton among those likely to vote in Wisconsin's Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, 47 to 42 percent, according to a poll by WISC-TV in Madison.
Likely Republican voters favored McCain, a senator from Arizona, over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, 48 to 32 percent.
The poll of 400 likely voters from each party showed 11 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans were still undecided when it was done Wednesday and Thursday.
Mike Huckabee campaigned in the state earlier Friday and defended his decision to stay in the race despite McCain's lead. He told supporters at a pancake restaurant in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield that he wants to give conservatives a voice.
CLINTON WORKS HER MESSAGE IN OHIO
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton smothered some kindness on Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, then declared her rivals wrong on the issues and vowed that she can beat both in her quest for the presidency.
She said Obama, her Democratic foe, has run an "extraordinary campaign," and called McCain, the likely Republican nominee, "a man of great heroism." But she cast Obama as a foe of universal health care and said she was better equipped to confront McCain in the fall "on his policies with respect to Iraq and so much of the rest of the world."
