Obama leads McCain by 10 points: Washington Post/ABC poll Reuters/Bdnews24.com . Washington

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leading his Republican rival John McCain 53 per cent to 43 per cent among likely voters, according to a Washington Post-ABC News opinion poll released on Monday.
Sixty-four per cent of voters now view Obama favourably, up six percentage points from early September, according to the poll taken after Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Nearly a third of voters have a better opinion of the Illinois senator because of his debate performance while eight per cent have a lower opinion of him, the poll found.
Twelve per cent of voters have a higher opinion of Arizona senator McCain after the debate, while 26 per cent said they had a worse opinion of him.
According to the poll, 52 per cent of voters now strongly favour McCain, down seven percentage points from early September.
More than half of respondents, 59 per cent said the Arizona senator has been mainly attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues, up from 48 per cent who said the same thing in August, the Post reported.
Sixty-eight per cent of respondents said Obama has been mainly addressing the issues.
On taxes, an issue McCain has been aggressively highlighting, Obama has gained a significant lead over his opponent.
According to the poll, Obama now leads McCain 52 per cent to 41 per cent on the question of who is trusted to handle taxes. In late September, the candidates were near even on that question with Obama ahead of McCain by two percentage points, 48 per cent to 46 per cent.
The poll of 1,101 adults, including 945 registered votes, was taking Wednesday though Saturday. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points for the full sample and three-point-five percentage points for the sample of 766 likely voters.
Meanwhile, McCain vowed to ‘whip’ Barack Obama’s ‘you know what’ in Wednesday’s final presidential debate, defying doom-laden assessments of his campaign.
McCain on Sunday gave a pep talk to campaign workers in Washington’s Virginia suburbs, as he plotted a comeback in the presidential race against Democrat Obama, just over three weeks from the election on November 4.
The Arizona senator said he and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin were criss-crossing battleground states and would intensify their effort after the debate in New York state on Wednesday.
‘So we’re spending a lot of time and after I whip his you know what in this debate we’re going to be going out,’ McCain said.
‘We’re a couple points down, okay, nationally, but we’re right in this game. ‘I know that we’re going to win this race.’
McCain spoke after several conservative pundits on Sunday television talk shows gave unflattering assessments of his campaign.
Some key Republicans in battleground states were also quoted in a New York Times article as lambasting his performance, as Obama enjoys leads in national and battleground polls.
McCain also told his supporters that he wanted a ‘respectful’ campaign after he had to intervene at a rally last week to tone down abusive rhetoric against Obama.