Sestak is leading Weldon 44-43 in a Franklin & Marshall College Keystone Poll that will be released today, falling well within the 4.7-percent margin of error. The poll of 430 voters refutes a recent Republican poll that showed Weldon leading by 19 points.

Democrats greeted the numbers as proof that Sestak has begun to have an impact on the electorate through nonstop campaigning and his first TV ad that hit the district two weeks ago.

"No one campaigns harder than Joe Sestak," said his senior campaign adviser, David Landau. "I just don’t know when he sleeps. He has more energy and more drive than any candidate I have ever worked for."

Weldon’s campaign said its internal poll puts the congressman significantly ahead and attributed the new numbers to negative mailings by the state Democratic committee and phone calls by liberal advocacy groups, known as 527s. The groups are named after the section of the tax code that grants them tax-exempt status.

While Weldon has tried to localize the race, focusing on his record of bringing jobs to the region, today’s Keystone Poll will show that the Iraq war is the salient issue in the district. Twenty-eight percent cited the war as their biggest concern, a higher percentage than any other issue, sources said Thursday.

Forty-nine percent of registered voters believe it’s time for change in the district and only 37 percent said Weldon deserves re-election -- a startling statistic for the 10-term incumbent. Thirteen percent are undecided.

"We’ve come a long way since Joe Sestak entered this race in February, and clearly his grassroots campaign has generated momentum," said Sestak spokesman Ryan Rudominer. "These numbers, from such a respected source, confirm what our grassroots campaign has been seeing out in the field every day. Voters of this district are eager for change."

Weldon spokesman Michael Puppio said he was skeptical of the results, with a recent Republican poll showing the congressman leading Sestak 52-33. The poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies on Sept. 12-13.

"That doesn’t jibe with our numbers," Puppio said of the latest poll. "Our numbers have us ahead with a comfortable lead."

He said the Keystone Poll is likely the result of anti-Weldon mailings and robo-calls and a report by the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that labeled Weldon as one of the "most corrupt" members of Congress.

"We have been positive and on message, and it certainly doesn’t appear that’s what the other side is going to do, so they can expect the same," Puppio said. "Curt Weldon is not going to stand there and get punched in the face by these 527s who lie and distort his record. He won’t take it. He will fight back."

Sestak, a retired Navy admiral, made his first television appearance earlier this month with a 30-second spot that focused on his national security background, opposition to the Iraq war and support for affordable health care. Weldon plans to hit the airwaves next week.

Rudominer said the poll shows voters are "rejecting Curt Weldon’s and President Bush’s stay-the-course policy in Iraq," while Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said it reflects dissatisfaction with Weldon’s ongoing pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Sestak has called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2007, while Weldon has proposed a plan that ties the drawdown to the ability of Iraqi troops to operate independently.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ed Patru declined to comment on the poll until it is released.

In addition to the combined $2.5 million the candidates had raised through June, the close of the last fund-raising period, the national Republican and Democratic committees plan to spend at least a couple million each for TV ads in the 7th District.

Weldon received more than $200,000 Monday at a Springfield Country Club fund-raiser with former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. Sestak will get some extra cash today when Wesley Clark, a retired NATO commander and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, visits the American Legion in Clifton Heights. The books close Saturday on the quarterly campaign finance reports.

The Keystone Poll follows an April intelligence report, portions of which were leaked to the news media over the weekend, stating that the Iraq war is "shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives." A declassified section of the National Intelligence Estimate, which represents the consensus view of the 16 U.S. spy agencies, says the "Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."

The White House has declined to release the rest of the report, saying it would endanger U.S. agents and risk revealing the nation’s intelligence-gathering methods.