Today's polls 8/19

There continues to be bleak news for Obama across the board, and again, McCain HQ will be wiping it's brow and heaving sighs of relief as two polls released today show a a broad tightening of the race, doing nothing to alter the recent narrative that Obama needs to step it up. Although he still maintains a slim lead nationally, a new Quinnipiac poll released this morning shows Obama +5 and an LA Times/Bloomberg poll released this afternoon shows Obama +2. Both of these polling companies released polls last month that showed much more comfortable leads for Obama.
The more troubling news for Obama though is that his numbers in states his campaign has been fighting hard for such as Indiana, North Carolina and Florida as well as safe states such as Pennsylvania and Minnesota have crumbled into very nail-biting margins.
His campaign has been on the air with both positive and negative ads in Indiana and North Carolina for over a month and new polls released today show McCain at +6 in both states. (McCain's campaign has bought $0 worth of airtime in both states) this blog has stated that North Carolina may very well be a long shot for Obama this election, but Indiana has surprisingly been in the toss up category since polls released last month showed a very tight race and also following news of soaring democratic voter registration, with Obama tied or ahead in each of the polls released since the enthusiastic state participation in the Democratic primary contest there in May. It looks like, depsite Obama's wide reaching ad campaign and promise to alter the electoral map, putting new states in play for him may be a bigger gamble than his campaign thought and we may be looking at the exact same states in play as have been in the past two elections and a narrower electoral victory for Obama this November, should he be able to pull it off.
With leads in Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and Colorado drying up or hanging by a thread the Obama campaign may want to think about changing up it's strategy towards these states or it's broad message overall.
With Obama's VP pick imminent and the Democratic National Convention next week, the democrats will be doing all they can to steal the spotlight and turn around Obama's crumbling numbers.