McCain Making Headway?

We're coming into the final stretch and it seems clear that John McCain is getting some traction over the last week, regardless of what you think of the accuracy of polling this year. Even Reuters/Zogby notes this:

McCain, a veteran Arizona senator, has sliced Obama's 12-point advantage by more than half in the last five days but he has not been able to break through the 45 percent support mark.

Well, we'll see. Obama is under the key 50% in their latest. I think Joe the Plumber, Joe foot in mouth on foreign policy Biden, and Barack Redistributionist Obama himself have helped change the game lately in McCain's direction. Obama's stated spread the wealth philosophy reminds people of his liberal record and his radical friends. Here's the McCain memo from their internal pollster:

In Joe the Plumber, the campaign seems to have found a storyline that sticks. Nearly six out of 10 voters in battleground states said they had heard “a lot” about that storyline, with more than eight in 10 saying they had heard “a lot” or “some.” The campaign has also succeeded in labeling Obama a liberal, according to McInturff, with 59% of respondents in battleground states describing him as such. [snip]

1. We are witnessing a significant shift across the battleground states.

The race has moved significantly over the past week, closing to essentially tied on the last two-day roll. These gains are coming from sub-groups it should be possible to sustain over the next week, including:

• Non-college men;
• Rural voters, both men and women;
• Right-to-life voters; and most encouragingly;
• We are beginning to once again get over a 20% chunk of the vote among soft Democrats.

Importantly as well, our long identified target of “Walmart women” – those women without a college degree in households under $60,000 a year in income are also swinging back solidly in our direction.

Finally, in terms of critical improvement, even as this track shows more Republicans voting for us than Democrats supporting Obama, we are witnessing an impressive “pop” with Independent voters.

As I said during our Sunday briefing, we do substantially more interviews per day than any public poll, but, given the shift we were witnessing, it was my expectation that by Tuesday/Wednesday multiple public polls would show the race closing. A quick glance at Real Clear Politics would indicate this is happening by today, Tuesday, and that’s good!

There's much more--have a look. RCP average here.

UPDATE: The Amazon indicator. Per Mick Stockinger here. Also too the Eyore indicator. Hillbuzz.