From Ambinder who reports on a CBS/NYT poll asking registered voters how they perceive the candidate spending their campaign time:
Meaning that McCain has been undermining his own pledges to run a positive and respectful campaign. The obvious question, though, is what do voters buy?
Also, Steve Benen looks at the last WP Poll internals and finds some interesting numbers:
As to which candidate is more honest and trustworthy — Obama 47% to McCain 36% As Steve notes, this is a complete reversal on these numbers (plus some gain for Obama) since the last poll that asked this.
As to who would do more to bring change to Washington — Obama 58% to McCain 33%
As to who better understands the economic problems people in this country are having — Obama 57% to McCain 33%
At to who would be the stronger leader — Obama 47% to McCain 46%. McCain used to own this question and Obama is narrowing the gap considerably.
Also an interesting bit of news from these internals — percent of voters for whom the race of the candidate is a very important factor has gone down from 23% in June to 16% now.
What this shows me is the underlying strength of the Obama campaign — according to this poll at least, he seems to have survived the non-stop attacks by the McCain camp and those attacks have quite damaged the Straight Talk Express. But it seems that letting McCain unwittingly reveal himself plus educating voters on McCain’s track record is making some headway. You could see alot of this in last night’s debate. Obama at the podium in a position of real strength, and McCain sneering, not looking at his opponent and taking every opportunity to attack Obama even with the lies that have already been debunked.