The true battlegrounds (there are only 5)

I promised months ago to keep readers abrest of the electoral situation and I haven't really, except for breathlessly reporting hot new polls out of sexy battleground states. However, my obsessive poll watching has helped me distill this thing down to the five states I think are actually, truly, really close and could still go either way. Sure, there are upwards of 10 states which could be considered close. But at this point does anyone really think Bush will win Oregon or Pennsylvania or New Hampshire or that Kerry will win Colorado or Nevada or West Virgina. Things can change. But at this point, I think Kerry has the most to gain. There are still some doubters out there who weren't entirely convinced by the debates but who don't like Bush. While Bush seems to have topped out shortly after his convention and has not been able to recover his once dominating position, Kerry's support is continuing to grow, particularly in the battlegrounds since the debates.

So here are the 5 true battlegrounds where the race is tied or one or the other have a slight advantage according to recent polls (some of the point spreads are based on rough averages where there have been multiple polls since the last debate):

Ohio: Kerry +2-4%
Florida: Kerry +1%
Wisconsin: Kerry +1-4%
Iowa: Bush +1%
New Mexico: tied

My list corresponds exactly to the "tossups" on Gery Daly's site. I think these states are where the election will be won or lost. If Kerry picks up Ohio as it is looking like he might, Bush has to go 2-3 in Iowa, Wisconsin and New Mexico. However, the wild card is Florida where a recent SurveyUSA poll shows us up by a single point - a 5 point rise since their last poll in the sunshine state. One last thing: ABC will be releasing a new Buckeye state poll tonight on World News Tonight. I suspect it will be close one way or the other, but we'll see. There is better than an outside chance it will show a slight advantage for Kerry since Bush has been absent from the state for the last couple weeks and even outfits like Rassmussen reports are showing Kerry polling even in Ohio for the first time since the RNC.