Political Wire's Taegan Goddard flags this:
Mark Halperin: "Chicago remains sufficiently funded and emboldened by its own polling to compete for the final two weeks in all nine of the battlegrounds: Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia in the South; New Hampshire in the North; Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin in the Midwest; and Nevada and Colorado in the West. As they have in the past, Obama campaign officials say they expect to win a high percentage of those states and conceivably could sweep all nine."
"When pressed, the Obama officials with whom I met said that five of the nine stand out: Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. In that quintet, Democrats believe the combination of their current leads in polling, early voting (where applicable), and ground game makes their chances of winning even greater there than in the other four. And given the Electoral College math, unless Romney picks off one or more of those five states, Obama would win a minimum of 281 electoral votes and re-election."
While I'm not extremely impressed with Halperin's pundit skills (he seems more interested in making headlines than in being right), I have no reason to doubt his journalistic skills nor -- as senior political analyst for Time -- his access to solid sources. I'd also note that Goddard seems to have an uncanny sense of what's newsworthy, meaning he seems to think this is pretty solid as well.
