Not news: MT is close. News: SD is close.

You heard it hear first. For at least a couple weeks, I've considered MT to be a very close race. Because of the lack of frequent polls in MT, this assessment has mostly come from polls in other states, combined with my key belief that changes in opinion in one state are highly correlated to changes in other states.

This was not a widely held opinion, but I feel rather vindicated now. Even before today's Rasmussen MT poll, I believed that McCain led MT by 0.7%, with a 5.4% margin-of-error as an snapshot of current opinion, or a 9.7% margin-of-error as a prediction of November results. So, when a poll comes out saying that Obama leads by 5% in MT with a 9% margin-of-error, I'm not surprised.

The next thing you should not be surprised about is that the SD is probably fairly close too. As in MT, Bush beat Kerry by 21 points in SD, and I see no reason why Obama would fail to improve by as much in the state of Tim Johnson and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin than he would in the state of Brian Schweitzer and Jon Tester. Also, so many of Obama's advisers are former Daschle people, that I'd be surprised if Obama doesn't put some (small) amount of resources into SD.