Barack Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois, on Wednesday underlined his strong position in the Democratic presidential race when he announced that he had virtually matched Hillary Clinton’s $26m fund-raising record in the last 10 weeks.

Mr Obama, 45, who only came to national attention in 2004 when he gave a widely lauded speech at the Democratic national convention, also announced that 100,000 people had donated to his campaign – almost twice the number of people donating to Mrs Clinton.