Obama leads McCain by 14 points: CBS/NYT poll

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads Republican rival John McCain by 14 percentage points, with three weeks to go until the U.S. election, a CBS News/New York Times poll showed on Tuesday.

Obama had 53 percent support to McCain's 39 percent in the national opinion poll, CBS News said. Obama's lead was 3 points higher than in the previous poll on October 6.

In the midst of a financial crisis and with the election looming on November 4, the stakes are high for the third and final debate between Obama and McCain on Wednesday at 9 p.m. EDT in Hempstead, New York.

"Among independents who are likely voters -- a group that has swung back and forth between McCain and Obama over the course of the campaign -- the Democratic ticket now leads by 18 points. McCain led among independents last week," CBS said.

It said Obama was widely seen as running the more positive campaign, with 61 percent saying McCain was spending more time attacking Obama than explaining what he would do as president. Just 27 percent said the same thing about Obama.

McCain's favorable rating dropped 4 points to 36 percent and was now lower than his 41 percent unfavorable rating, CBS said. Obama was seen favorably by half of registered voters and unfavorably by 32 percent.

The latest CBS News/New York Times poll was conducted by telephone among 1,070 adults nationwide from Friday to Monday. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

McCain has sought to regain his footing on economic issues over the past three weeks after facing criticism for saying the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were strong despite signs of crisis on Wall Street.

During that time, Obama has moved from a tie with McCain in national polls to a lead.

In more bad news for the McCain campaign, a Quinnipiac University/Wall Street Journal/Washingtonpost.com poll on Tuesday gave Obama sizable leads in four battleground states.

McCain and Obama unveiled new plans this week to head off a recession in the United States as officials around the world try to ward off economic damage from the financial crisis.

(Reporting by John O'Callaghan; Editing by Peter Cooney)