NYTimes Poll/CBS News Poll

A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said that Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up 9 percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said that the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favored Senator Barack Obama.

In a possible indication that the choice of Ms. Palin has hurt Mr. McCain’s image, voters said that they had much more confidence in Mr. Obama to pick qualified people to serve in his administration than they did in Mr. McCain.
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The survey suggested that the historic candidacy of Mr. Obama, who would be the first African-American president if elected, has changed some perceptions of race in America. Nearly two-thirds of those polled said that white and black people have an equal chance of getting ahead in today’s society, up from the half who said that they thought so in July. And while 14 percent still said that most people they know would not vote for a black presidential candidate, a question pollsters often ask to try to gauge bias, the number has dropped considerably since the campaign began.
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With just days until Americans choose a new president, the survey found respondents deeply uneasy about the state of their country. Eight-five percent of them said that the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, near the record high recorded earlier this month. A majority said that the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. And President Bush’s approval rating remains at 22 percent, tied for the lowest presidential approval rating on record (which was President Harry S. Truman’s rating, recorded by the Gallup poll in 1952).
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Dixie Cromwell, a 36-year-old cosmetologist from Shelby, N.C., who is a Republican, said in a follow-up interview that she had already voted for Mr. Obama.

“I come from a family of Republicans and I generally vote Republican, but this year I voted Democrat,” she said. “I just don’t feel we can go through any more of the same old thing that we’ve been going through with the Republican party.”