The presidential race has grown much closer, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll Wednesday that shows John McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters as the election nears.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., waves at a rally in Leesburg, Va., Wednesday, October 22, 2008. [Agencies]

The poll comes as McCain fights the perception that Obama is the better candidate to turn around a teetering financial sector, skyrocketing foreclosures and higher unemployment.

McCain has seized recently on Obama's tax plans as socialist redistribution, a message he pushed Wednesday in Democratic-leaning New Hampshire and that may have gained some traction among conservatives. Obama brushed aside McCain's claims the same day.

The new poll finds Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent and suggests that the race has narrowed as more conservative voters have drifted home to their party as the November 4 election approaches.

Three weeks ago, an AP-GfK survey found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead over McCain, lifted by voters concerned about the economy. The contest is still volatile and 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 among likely voters in the latest George Washington University Battleground Poll. In other surveys focusing on likely voters, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Obama up by 9 percentage points, while a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center had Obama leading by 14. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, among the broader category of people registered to vote, found Obama ahead by 10 points.

McCain has been hammering Obama on his tax plan in the last week. The Democratic senator has proposed a reversal of President George W. Bush's tax cuts that mainly benefited the wealthy. The additional revenue, Obama contends, would offset tax breaks he wants to give to the 95 percent of Americans who make less than $250,000 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.

Obama said he just wanted to reverse the Bush cuts that McCain initially opposed.

"Was John McCain a socialist back in 2000?," when he opposed President Bush's proposals, Obama asked at a news conference.

"It's not a very plausible argument," he said of the late-campaign allegations launched daily by McCain and running mate Sarah Palin.

Obama made his remarks at a news conference after a meeting with national security advisers focused on international affairs. The Illinois senator gained a huge boost on the foreign policy front over the weekend when longtime Republican Colin Powell, former secretary of state under Bush, endorsed him. Powell's backing helps Obama undercut McCain's perceived dominance on foreign policy issues.

Obama convened the meeting of retired generals and foreign policy mavens from Washington and the diplomatic world at a grand, historic hotel in Richmond, Virginia, a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1964. Polls show Obama with a slight lead there.