With 25 days to go until the election, Barack Obama is presently at his
all-time highs in four of the six national tracking polls (Research
2000, Battleground, Hotline and Zogby) and is just one point off his
high in Gallup. He has emerged with clear leads in both Florida and
Ohio, where there are several polls out today. He is blowing McCain out
in most polls of Pennsylvania and Michigan, and is making states like
West Virgina and Georgia competitive.
There's just nothing in there for McCain to hang his hat on. Even a pollster like Strategic Vision,
which has generally had a Republican lean this cycle, now has Florida
and Ohio going against them (Florida in a big way). Well, OK, maybe
they'll hold on to Indiana, although both campaigns' internals likely have the state closer than Rasmussen does.
McCain is getting some criticism for campaigning in Iowa, and for sending Sarah Palin out to West Virginia,
but the truth is that their electoral hand is so poor right now that it
doesn't much matter in which states they're deciding to bide their
time. Remember, any world in which McCain has a chance to win on
Election Day is a world that looks very different from this one -- some
significant event will have to have occurred to fundamentally change
the momentum of the race. We don't know which states might be affected
disproportionately by such an event, and so a lot of states are
conceivably worth attacking or defending, any of which could potentially become more important in the face of unknown unknowns.
--Nate Silver