Putting Montana in Play

Montana has tightened in the polls -- many map gurus mark the state as a "toss up" -- and this scared the Republican National Committee into dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertisements.

Republican John McCain has history on his side in Montana; Democrat Barack Obama has 19 campaign offices.

Montana is typically safe territory for Republican presidential candidates—President Bush won the state by about 20 points in both 2000 and 2004, and only two Democratic presidential candidates have carried the state since 1948.

But Obama staked out Montana early as a potential battleground state and he's sticking with it to the end. McCain, confident of winning the state and its three electoral votes, is virtually ignoring it, although the Republican National Committee will begin airing ads in Montana for the first time Wednesday.

Obama's campaign didn't back off when the state appeared to be a shoo-in for John McCain in September. And now McCain's lead appears to be in doubt. A recent Montana State University-Billings poll showed the race within the margin of error, with Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 40 percent among likely voters, and 10 percent undecided.

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