Barack Obama talks with customers during a campaign stop at O'Keefe's Pub in Clearwater, Fla., on Sept. 23. Obama makes key gains in tight race

Riding a wave of worry about the nation's financial health, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has broken into a lead in a national poll and has made slight but notable progress in several crucial battleground states, including Florida and Virginia.

Obama moved decisively ahead of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a Washington Post-ABC News Poll. And a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found that respondents thought Obama would do a better job handing the financial crisis than McCain, by 45 percent to 33 percent.


Perhaps more worrisome for his campaign, however, was a wave of polls this week showing Obama making gains in Florida and Virginia, both of which had looked favorable for McCain.

McCain is also having to sweat states that should be in his back pocket. He is adding staff in North Carolina, and Republicans are considering airing TV ads in Indiana.

The electoral math still shows several opportunities for McCain, and the Republican ticket remains strong in traditional toss-ups like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and emerging battlegrounds like Minnesota.

Since the conventions, Obama has also gained ground in the battlegrounds of Michigan, Colorado and New Mexico.

McCain has his own bragging points: Obama has moved staff out of Georgia and North Dakota, and has not put away Wisconsin. The two campaigns disagree on whether or not Obama has clinched Iowa, with both claiming gains that are sticking.

McCain has showed progress in Wisconsin; Minnesota, where Republicans held their convention; Alaska, the home state of running mate Sarah Palin; and North Dakota.

McCain has also made gains in New Hampshire, according to two new polls by ARG and the University of New Hampshire, which showed McCain up by 3 points and 2 points, respectively, in the one state that flipped from red to blue between 2000 and 2004.

Ohio and Pennsylvania remain super tight.

Nationally, the Real Clear Politics polling average has Obama up 2.5 points in a race that had been tied, suggesting that the bounce from McCain’s selection of Palin has peaked.

Republican uber-strategist Karl Rove, who keeps running state-by-state projections on Rove.com, wrote this week: “[I]f the movement toward Obama in national polls continues to percolate down to the states, we could see an Obama lead later this week.”

Friday’s opening debate should shake up the race yet again, and both campaigns say the race is close and will remain close. But key strategists in both parties say the sudden focus on the economy, and McCain’s mixed messages following the implosion on Wall Street, have given Obama a solid footing just as many undecided voters begin to tune in.

“The shift is significant but it’s not big,” said a top Obama official. “The more Barack Obama can convince voters that he has the strength to handle the economic concerns of the country, the better likelihood he’s going to have to get elected. And I think we’re winning that argument.”

Obama has moved staff out of Georgia, although his campaign says the remaining staff of 53 is the most a Democratic presidential campaign has had in the state in at least 30 years.

In Florida, Obama had a two-point lead in an NBC/Mason-Dixon poll released Tuesday – a statistical tie. Perhaps more significant than the top-line number, the poll showed Obama trailing McCain by just six points among Florida’s Latino population, which has tended to support the GOP in past elections.

Other recent Florida polls also show McCain leading, but within the margin of error. A St. Petersburg Times poll released over the weekend gave McCain a 47-45 percent lead in the state, and a recent American Research Group survey had the two candidates tied at 46 percent.

In Virginia, too, the Democratic nominee seems in a substantially stronger position than he was just weeks ago. An ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted from Sept. 18-21 placed Obama three points ahead of his opponent, leading 49-46 percent. A poll by SurveyUSA released Monday by WJLA ABC 7 and other news organizations gave Obama a wider, six-point lead.

As in Florida, some polls have still shown McCain ahead – but every recent survey has shown Obama within very plausible reach in the Old Dominion, which has not supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.

In Minnesota, which had previously looked out of reach for the Republican ticket, two new polls by Quinnipiac and ARG measured Obama’s edge at two points or less. In June, a Quinnipiac poll gave the Democrat a 17-point lead in the state.

Through the swath of battlegrounds surrounding the Great Lakes, McCain is consistently within a few points of the Democratic nominee, and even slightly ahead in the state of Ohio, where a poll sponsored by several state newspapers showed McCain with a six-point lead over the weekend.

But with states like Florida, Virginia and, in the mountain West, Colorado and Nevada looking increasingly favorable to Obama, McCain may not be able to reach 270 by picking off just one or two of these Midwestern swing states. If Obama’s upward trend continues, McCain would have to run the tables in these states, or win a big surprise victory elsewhere, in order to make up for it.