It's not just Michigan -- the polls are looking better and better across the country!  (But let's not get complacent -- I want a landslide!)

With the first presidential debate completed and both candidates grappling with the turmoil on Wall Street in Washington, Senator Barack Obama is showing signs of gaining significant support among voters with less than five weeks left until Election Day, while Senator John McCain’s image has been damaged by his response to the economic meltdown.

A CBS News poll released Wednesday found that Mr. Obama’s favorability rating, at 48 percent, is the highest it has ever been in polls conducted by CBS and The New York Times. At the same time, the number of voters who hold an unfavorable view of Mr. McCain — 42 percent — is as high as it has been since CBS News and The Times began asking the question about Mr. McCain in 1999, the first time he ran for president.

The CBS News poll showed that Mr. Obama has a nine percentage-point lead over Mr. McCain — 49 percent to 40 percent. It is the first time Mr. Obama has held a statistically significant lead over Mr. McCain this year in polls conducted by CBS or joint polls by CBS and The Times. And a series of polls taken in highly contested states released by other organizations on Tuesday suggested that Mr. Obama was building leads in states including Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The CBS News poll found that President Bush has tied the presidential record for a low approval rating — 22 percent, matching Harry S. Truman’s Gallup approval rating in 1952, when the country was mired in the Korean War and struggling with a stagnant economy. That finding put a new premium on Mr. McCain’s effort to distance himself from Mr. Bush, and suggests that Mr. Bush will continue to be a prominent figure in the Obama campaign’s advertisements attacking Mr. McCain.

Here's more on the polls from James Forman:

As y'all know, I don't place much stock in polls.  Folks get too hyped, or too bummed, depending on the day's polls.  And the polls change all the time.  That said, today's are pretty delicious. Here they are analyzed by Nate Silver (for my money he has the best polling site out there, because he analyzes them as well as reports results):  http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/todays-polls-101.html

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Poll Finds Obama Gaining Support and McCain Weakened in Bailout Crisis

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE

Published: October 1, 2008

www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/us/politics/02poll.html

With the first presidential debate completed and both candidates grappling with the turmoil on Wall Street in Washington, Senator Barack Obama is showing signs of gaining significant support among voters with less than five weeks left until Election Day, while Senator John McCain’s image has been damaged by his response to the economic meltdown.