CBS Poll: Voters Increasingly View McCain As Negative

The latest CBS News/New York Times poll will be released at 6:30pm ET today but a sneak peak at it shows that an increasing number of voters see John McCain as running a negative campaign while more see Obama as explaining what he would do as president.

Sixty four percent of registered voters said McCain is spending more time attacking his opponent, up from 61 percent who said that just over a week ago and from 53 percent in late September. Just 27 percent said he is spending more time explaining what he would do, compared to 69 percent who said that about Obama. Just 22 percent said they thought Obama was spending more time attacking McCain, down from 35 percent who said so in late September.

McCain has denied that he has attacked his candidate more often but in an interview with CBS News' Harry Smith, Obama said McCain's tone has been much more negative. "I don't think there's any equivalence between what we've been doing and what John McCain's been doing," Obama said. "Witness some of the comments that have been made just over the last several months, his last several weeks, 'Socialistic.' You know, 'Pals around with terrorists.' I mean, just - the kinds of stuff that - that I can't imagine saying about an opponent of mine."

Tune into the CBS Evening News tonight and come back to CBSNews.com at 6:30 ET for the full results of the poll.

This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1152 adults nationwide, including 1046 registered voters, interviewed by telephone October 19-22, 2008. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample and the sample of registered voters could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.