These numbers, caught a few days ago by Marc Ambinder, are just stunning:

In the ABC News / Washington Post poll of Ohio, 37% of those who made it through the likely voter screen said they had been contacted by the Obama campaign in some way or another. That's ten points higher than the number who say they've been contacted by the McCain campaign.

And adding in e-mails or texts, the Obama figure rises to 43% of voters -- probably a record for a presidential campaign.

Think about this number for a moment. About three in eight voters deemed likely to show up to the polls in Ohio on November 4 have been contacted by the Obama campaign. Considering that hardcore Republicans -- say 40 percent or so of the electorate -- is out of play for Obama, that means that upwards of 72 percent of likely voters who could even conceivably vote for Barack Obama have heard from his campaign, whether through a knock on the door, a piece of direct mail delivered to the house, a call on the phone, a text to the cell, or an email sent to the computer. All of this, of course, about a month away from election day.

The ground game metrics may not come through in the top like numbers from polling around the country, but when it comes to election day -- when it actually counts -- the team with the far superior GOTV organization generally is able to pull out the victory. How exactly these efforts can and will swing the numbers, both nationally and in the key states, remains to be seen, but I would be very surprised if this seeming organizational divide between the two campaigns isn't apparent in the ultimate results of the election.

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This is why Secretary of State elections matter:

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner won plaudits from voting rights activists by issuing a directive that they say will protect the ability of millions of registered voters to cast ballots on Election Day.

Since those voters skew urban, young and low-income, Brunner's ruling could be good news for Democrats.

Ohio Republicans, though, disagree with the ruling, saying that the voting rolls must be purged of outdated registrations in order to prevent voter fraud. They even compare her ruling with that of her predecessor -- a Republican whose administration of the 2004 election led to partisan charges of voter fraud.

[...]

The voting rights activists worried that a 2006 state law -- requiring that a piece of registered mail with election information be sent to every registered voter in the state -- could disenfranchise voters. The practice known as "vote caging" occurs when legitimate voters are removed from election rolls because their residency is being questioned. Instead they would have to vote provisionally.

Republicans are big fans of tricks like vote caging to -- as the co-chairman of Lawyers for McCain in Ohio William Todd said it -- put their "thumb on the scale for partisan purposes." So it should come as little surprise that this year, with Ohio's Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner saying no to such tactics, that Republicans are up in arms. Legitimate voters get swept up in the purge of the voting rolls? No worries. But ending a tactic that could help Republicans win an election? A shanda!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- this is exactly why Secretary of State elections are so important.

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The McCain campaign has made a serious play at bringing Minnesota into the Republican fold this year and making sure that Iowa goes red, as it did for George W. Bush in 2004. But the latest polling seems to indicate that these efforts are falling on deaf ears.

In a CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Wednesday afternoon, 55 percent of Iowa registered voters who were questioned said that Obama, D-Illinois, is their choice for president, with 40 percent backing McCain, R-Arizona. That's more than double the lead Obama had in a University of Iowa poll taken early last month.

"Obama is winning in all regions of the state -- even in the western counties where George W. Bush beat John Kerry by 17 points," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Obama is winning rural voters in Iowa -- not something you see in many other states."

[...]

It appears to be a similar story in Minnesota, where the Republicans are holding their national convention this week.

The poll indicates that Obama has a 12-point lead over McCain, 53 percent to 41 percent.

Without these latest surveys in the mix, Barack Obama's lead in Iowa and Minnesota were 6.5 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively, according to Pollster.com. With competitive congressional races in both states, as well as an important Senate contest in Minnesota, the fact that Obama is currently running so far ahead of John Kerry in these two states is important.

While Minnesota and Iowa do not appear to be tightening up, the numbers out of Ohio are a bit swingier.

The poll suggests he has a two-point lead over McCain, 47 percent to 45 percent, which is a virtual tie when taking into account the survey's 3.5-percentage-point sampling error.

Overall, Obama seems to be faring quite well in the wake of the Democratic National Convention and the initial announcement of Sarah Palin as the GOP Vice Presidential nominee. Of course it will be worth waiting at least another week, perhaps even two, before jumping to too hard of conclusions about the state of the race, as tens of millions will presumably tune in tonight and tomorrow night to see Palin and John McCain deliver their speeches. That all said, there can be few complaints about the initial movement since the DNC and where the race now sits.

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Tough news for John McCain. Despite the fact that McCain, along with the Republican National Committee, invested at least $6 million in Pennsylvania on advertisements, outspending Barack Obama by roughly a 3-to-2 margin, MccCain's numbers aren't budging upward one bit, according to new Quinnipiac polling.

Pennsylvania (8/17-24, 1,234 LVs, MoE +/- 2.8%)

John McCain (R): 42 percent (42 percent on July 31)
Barack Obama (D): 49 percent (49 percent on July 31)

The numbers out of Florida and Ohio, unlike those from Pennsylvania, are within the margin of error.

Florida (8/17-24, 1,069 LVs, MoE +/- 3.0%)

John McCain (R): 47 percent (44 percent on July 31)
Barack Obama (D): 43 percent (46 percent on July 31)

Ohio (8/17-24, 1,234 LVs, MoE +/- 2.8%)

John McCain (R): 43 percent (44 percent on July 31)
Barack Obama (D): 44 percent (46 percent on July 31)

No doubt it would be nice to see more favorable numbers for Barack Obama in Florida and Ohio at this juncture, though it's likely the case that the race will be tight in both states all the way through November, and a blowout in either direction is not terribly likely. In Florida, in particular, the fact that Obama appears to be losing ground despite the fact that he has been on the air while McCain has not is at least somewhat worrisome (even if Florida is not by any means a necessary part of the Democratic coalition and road to 270 this fall). That all said, that McCain is utterly failing in making Pennsyvlania a real race should be of equal concern to his campaign, especially considering that Iowa, which George W. Bush carried in 2004, leaning towards Obama and other red states -- including Colorado and Virginia, and even North Dakota and Alaska -- definitely in play).

Must be good news for John McCain.

Florida

John McCain: 44 percent
Barack Obama: 46 percent

(June: Obama 47, McCain 43)

Ohio

John McCain: 44 percent
Barack Obama: 46 percent

(June: Obama 48, McCain 42)

Pennsylvania

John McCain: 42 percent
Barack Obama: 49 percent

(June: Obama 52, McCain 40)

With numbers like these, it must be a statistical heat, right? Of course the odds of it being a tie considering Obama led or was tied in 50 straight national polls up through Sunday is are about .0000000000000009 (perhaps a little higher now with the Gallup poll showing Obama up among registered voters but down according to the pollster's likely voter model). But, still, it must be a tie...

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