Barack Obama's image suffers under John McCain attacks, poll finds

The presidential race remains tight, with respondents to a Times/Bloomberg poll choosing Obama by 45% to McCain's 43%, a statistical dead heat. Obama's race remains an issue with many voters.

Barack Obama's public image has eroded this summer amid a daily onslaught of attacks from Republican rival John McCain, leaving the race for the White House statistically tied, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today.

Far more voters say McCain has the right experience to be president, the poll found. More than a third have questions about Obama's patriotism.

The survey also illustrates some of the campaign's racial undercurrents as the Illinois senator strives to become the first African American president. Most voters say they know at least some people who feel uneasy about electing a black president; 17% say the country is not ready to do so.

More striking than the head-to-head matchup, however, is the drop in Obama's favorable rating in the run-up to his selection of a running mate and the Democratic National Convention next week in Denver.

Obama's favorable rating has sunk to 48% from 59% since the last Times/Bloomberg poll in June. At the same time, his negative rating has risen to 35% from 27%.

By comparison, McCain's ratings have hardly budged during the same period: 46% of voters have a positive feeling about him; 38% give him negative ratings.

"All the negative attacks from the McCain campaign seem to have been paying off," said Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, who oversaw the survey.

Dominating the news during that period was the Russian invasion of Georgia. McCain has used the crisis to try to strengthen his upper hand on foreign affairs, calling for a tough U.S. posture against Russia to protect American interests in areas around the former Soviet Union.

The survey found that 63% of voters have confidence in Obama's ability to deal wisely with an international crisis, while 77% feel that way about McCain.

McCain and his allies have portrayed Obama in recent weeks as a naive celebrity who is unprepared to lead the nation in dangerous times. McCain, a Navy aviator who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has also suggested that Obama would put personal ambition ahead of America's best interests.

With that backdrop, the poll found that 35% of voters have questions about how patriotic Obama is; only 9% wondered how patriotic McCain is. Nearly half of voters say Obama lacks the right experience to be president, while 14% feel that way about McCain.

The poll found that McCain, long an unpopular figure among conservatives, has had more success than Obama in rallying his party's base. Nine out of 10 Republicans favor McCain, while just under 8 in 10 Democrats support Obama.

But independents, who could wind up deciding the election, favor Obama, 47% to 36%.

And Obama's backers are more enthusiastic than McCain's, suggesting that the Democrat holds greater potential for a strong turnout of supporters. The poll found that 78% of Obama's supporters were enthusiastic about his candidacy; 61% of McCain's backers felt that way.

Overall, Obama holds a narrow edge over the Arizona senator, 45% to 43%, which falls within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. In June, Obama was ahead by 12 points. Other polls at that time showed him with a narrower lead.