A reality check

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Let's not get carried away with this landslide talk. As we noted on Monday, and has been noted elsewhere today, the states that get Obama past 260 EVs: CO (+3), NV (-1), NH (+0), OH (-1), VA (+1), FL (+1), NC (-2), IN (-2) and MO (-3) are all within a couple of points. (Pollster averages shown). Give CO to Obama, and he's at 269, and it wouldn't take much (a well-timed raising of the terror alert level, Wright (he's coming, you know he's coming - I thought they would wait until the last week, but I think it will be sooner now), GOP dirty tricks on election day, and a natural tightening) to put the national race at 2-3 points, and Obama could easily lose all the states shown above.

From AFL-CIO deputy political director Mike Podhorzer:

"This election remains extremely volatile in the battlegrounds," Podhorzer told us. "The public polls are giving a false sense of precision about where the race is. That's a story that's not really being told."

Strikingly, Podhorzer said that his union's internal polls -- which push voters hard on the question of whether people are really firmly committed to their pick -- show that as many as "15 to 20 percent" of battleground state voters remain "persuadable," as he put it, despite what public polls say about the level of undecided voters.

"There are more voters than you'd expect who are just starting to pay attention to the election," he said. "And there's a lot of room for people to go back and forth." - TPM Election Central

Let us know, in the comments, your predictions for the 9 states shown above.