New Poll: McCain's Negative Campaign is Costing Him, Not Obama

The conventional wisdom on negative campaigning is that it usually causes both sides' unfavorables to rise. Not in late 2008. It looks like John McCain's aspersions of Barack Obama, ACORN, etc. and his poor response to the stock market crash are blowing all back on him:

Negative campaigning and a month of intense public focus on collapsing global economic and financial markets have not been kind to McCain. The new AP-Yahoo News poll of likely voters, conducted this month by Knowledge Networks, shows more people viewing him favorably than unfavorably by just 5 percentage points, down from a 21-point difference in mid-September.

During the same period, Obama went the other way, increasing a 5 percentage-point net favorable rating to 15 points. Now, Obama is seen favorably by 57 percent and McCain by 52 percent a close margin that masks the opposite direction the two rivals' ratings are heading.