Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Mark Udall is up 7 points over Republican Bob Schaffer in a poll released Wednesday by Ciruli Associates - including a 21-point Udall lead on the Western Slope.

The poll also showed Barack Obama leading John McCain up by a single point in Colorado, 44 percent to 43 percent.

The survey was taken "just prior" to the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 -- meaning it was also conducted before the U.S. House rejected a $700 billion financial bailout package on Monday.

The poll was conducted among 501 likely Colorado voters, a press release stated. The margin of error was +/- 4.4 percentage points.  

The survey showed both Obama and Schaffer leading among Western Slope voters: Udall by 21 points, Obama by 10 percentage points. Those numbers came from polling of 70 Western Slope voters.

Schaffer manager Dick Wadhams again said the U.S. Senate race would "go to the wire," and said that the "substantially small" number of Western Slope voters surveyed in the poll skewed the results.

"That tells me that the race (as a whole) is much closer than the numbers show," Wadhams said.

Udall spokesperson Tara Trujillo said while "we've always known a competitive race," she added the poll reflected that "Coloradoans understand who stands with them and up for them and it's Mark Udall."

The McCain and Obama campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday afternoon.

The poll also showed Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter's approval rating at 58 percent -- a drop from an approval rating of 77 percent in 2007, but close to former Gov. Bill Owens' approval numbers near the end of his term in September 2006. Twenty-eight percent of those polled disapproved of Ritter's job performance.

President Bush's approval rating in the state was 32 percent, compared to 62 percent who disapproved of his job performance, the poll found.