Whoa!

The NY Times/CBS poll has just been released, and it has bad news for Senator McCain:

Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said that they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for Mr. McCain.

A fourteen point difference! That's incredible.

Voters who said that their opinions of Mr. Obama had changed recently were twice as likely to say that they had gotten better as to say they had gotten worse. And voters who said that their views of Mr. McCain had changed were three times more likely to say that they had gotten worse than to say they had improved.

And what was it that caused three out of four to say their opinion of McCain had gotten worse? Was it his fumbling about the economy? Not according to the probable voters:

The top reasons cited by those who said that [they] thought less of Mr. McCain were his recent attacks and his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. (The vast majority said that their opinions of Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, and Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee, had remained unchanged in recent weeks.) But in recent days, Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin have scaled back their attacks on Mr. Obama, although Mr. McCain suggested he might aggressively take on Mr. Obama in Wednesday’s debate.

Wow.

Wow oh wow oh wow. But watch out! As we've seen before, polls can change quickly. This just makes tomorrow night that much more important for McCain. He's got to bring up Ayers (see prior post). But will he get on the voter fraud bamboozlement train? The negative campaigning has backfired on him, but at this point, what alternative does he have?