But Republicans and some Democratic strategists not associated with the Obama campaign say the overall electoral map has become more familiar in the past few weeks. One reason is McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Her choice has helped to harden some of the red-and-blue political divisions of past years, dampening Obama's hopes of picking off some solid GOP states.

Reviewing the state of play a week after the Republican convention ended, McCain pollster Bill McInturff declared: “Obama's campaign's effort to extend the electoral map has largely failed. We once again have a pretty conventional and expected list of tossup states that will decide the election.”

Steve Hildebrand, deputy campaign manager for Obama, disagreed, saying there has been no contraction of the Democratic nominee's ambitions to provide as many avenues as possible to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election. “Other than Alaska being much less likely to be a competitive state because of Sarah Palin, we have not seen any reason to believe that we should shrink the map,” he said.