The voters now have their say - at least as reported in a new Rasmussen Reports poll - on who was dealing race cards, Barack Obama with his "dollar bill" remark or John McCain with his television ad picturing Obama in a sequence with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

The verdict: those who found Obama's remark racist far outnumbered those who thought that of the ad.

It could be asked if this poll used the right examples on each side for comparison. In the often-convoluted way that race makes itself felt in American politics, some have suggested that simply the fact that the McCain camp chose to seize on Obama's remarks and accused him of injecting the race card had in and of itself injected race back into the campaign. And perhaps it was McCain's decision to make the accusation itself that should have been measured against the perceived intent of what Obama said when it came to judging who had injected race into the campaign.

Race re-entered the campaign in a big way, just as it did during the nomination fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton, when McCain's campaign accused Obama of playing the race card after this Obama remark (video) during stops in small-town Missouri: "They're going to try to say, 'Well, you know, he's got a funny name, and he doesn't look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five-dollar bills,' and they're going to send out nasty e-mails."

Into the mix came the now famous McCain ad suggesting Obama was riding a wave of celebrity like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, an ad that some Obama supporters suggested had racial overtones by linking Obama to young white women. Obama later said the ads were "cynical" and not "racist."

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed by Rasmussen agreed that the McCain ad was not racist. Twenty-two percent said it was and this number included only 18 percent of whites. However, among black voters, 58 percent found the ad to be racist. (By the way, her objection wasn't on the issue of race, but Paris Hilton's mother said today in the Huffington Post that she didn't care much for the ad in which her daughter was featured).

But when it came to Obama's remarks, voters judged them racist by 53 percent to 38 percent. That included 53 percent of white voters and 44 percent of black voters.

Perhaps just as importantly in the long run, the poll also shows that one apparent McCain strategy is working - namely, producing ads that, in themselves, attract free news coverage and generate interest in them. Rasmussen said that 69 percent of voters said they had seen news coverage of the ad.