McCain camp betting on Pa., Southwest

John McCain’s
campaign manager said Sunday that polls showing rival Barack Obama way ahead in
the presidential race are flawed, and that the Arizona senator is poised for a
comeback victory on Tuesday.

Rick Davis put a
positive spin on the electoral situation on “Fox News Sunday,” saying that McCain
has pulled even in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, and that the Republican
nominee is “doing great” in Pennsylvania and is poised for a “slam-bang finish.”

{mosads}“I mean, it’s
going to be wild,” Davis said. “I think that we are able to close this
campaign. John McCain may be the greatest closer politician of all time.”
Davis also disputed the advantages Obama appears to have secured from
unprecedented levels of early voting, arguing that there has been no “structural
change” in the demographic of voters who are voting early.

Davis did
double-duty Sunday morning, appearing later on ABC’s “This Week with George
Stephanopoulos,” where he again made his case for a comeback win for McCain,
saying that suburban, exurban and rural voters make up the undecideds and that
they would break for McCain.

He stressed his
belief that Pennsylvania is one of the most important states to watch Tuesday
night, telling Stephanopoulos that he thinks “it’s a state we can snatch from
the Democrats and really be a part of our coalition for the election.”

Senior Obama advisers
countered Davis on both programs, exuding confidence as they eye a map
significantly expanded from 2004 and polls that show their candidate in the
driver’s seat.

On Fox, Obama
campaign manager David Plouffe said Davis “always makes an effective case for
his candidate, but that’s not what we see at all.”

Plouffe disputed
Davis’s reading of the map, laying out a number of states and organizational
advantages Plouffe said the Obama camp enjoys over McCain. Plouffe also stated
that the early voting numbers he has seen in states like North Carolina have
provided Obama with “a decisive edge.”

Plouffe argued
that in several red states like Indiana, Virginia and Florida, Republicans were
“asleep at the switch” earlier in the year, thinking those states were safe
while the Obama camp was organizing and expanding its electoral map to allow
for several paths to victory.

“Our number one
strategic goal was to have a big playing field,” Plouffe said. “We did not
want to wake up on the morning on Nov. 4th waiting for one state. We wanted a
lot of different ways to win this election.”

David Axelrod, a
senior adviser to Obama, said on ABC that his main concern two days out is that
Obama voters would get complacent thinking they don’t need to vote in what they
think will be a landslide win.

“I don’t want
people to hear me or anyone and assume that this campaign is over,” Axelrod
said. “If we are casual about this and we don’t go to the polls and make our
voices heard, then we could get a result that the polls don’t project. And that’s
my concern.”

Fox News
contributor Karl Rove laid out an electoral map that currently has Obama
surpassing the 270 electoral votes needed to win and securing at least 311
electoral votes.