NYTIMES: TROUBLE FOR OBAMA ON PENNSYLVANIA

MIGHT MCCAIN WIN PENNSYLVANIA? YES... ACCORDING TO THE NYTIMES, AT LEAST:

Pennsylvania has voted for Democrats for president since 1992.

But no one ever said winning it would be as easy for Senator Barack Obama as, say, ladling Cheez Whiz onto a Pat’s steak.

In April he managed to insult the state’s rural voters, saying they cling to their guns and religion because they are bitter about their economic plight. And he lost the primary to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Since winning the Democratic nomination, Mr. Obama’s campaign has labored to secure his standing here.

It has conducted a ferocious voter registration drive, flooded the airwaves with commercials and dispatched thousands of volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls.

It has opened 65 offices across the state — four times as many as Mr. McCain has — and more than it has opened in any other state.

Still, Craig Schirmer, the Obama state director, said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday that he expected the race here to be “incredibly close,” within “a couple” of percentage points.

Maybe he was just lowering expectations.

But a new Quinnipiac poll released on Thursday shows that Mr. Obama’s lead over Mr. McCain in Pennsylvania has shrunk to three percentage points (48-45) from seven percentage points on Aug. 26. (The sampling was taken Sept. 5-9 of 1,001 likely Pennsylvania voters with a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, making the results statistically a dead heat.)

Mr. McCain has narrowed the gap in Pennsylvania by wiping out Mr. Obama’s lead among independent voters, said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute

• I THINK MCCAIN WILL WIN PENNSYLVANIA AND EVEN MICHIGAN, WHICH IS ALSO CLOSER OW THAN ANYONE THOUGHT POSSIBLE.
• IF THINGS KEEP GOING THE WAY THEY HAVE BEEN, THEN IT WILL BE A MCCAIN-PALIN LANDSLIDE.