The memo from McCain pollster Bill McInturff makes for some fascinating reading, particularly this section:

We have merged all of our interviews over the last three plus weeks to identify undecided and respondents who “refuse to respond” on the ballot question. This can be as high as one out of ten voters, but is generally about eight percent (8%) of the electorate in battleground states.
These voters might generally be non-voters in most cycles. But, in this cycle, 61% describe their interest in the election as a 10. This is higher than the last track among ALL voters in 1996 and 2000.
These voters are older, downscale, more rural, and are certainly economically stressed. They are quite negative about the direction of country and seek change. They voted for Bush over Kerry by a margin of 47% to 24% and this partisan advantage is a critical element to understanding our capacity to “get” these voters.
They have significant hesitations about Senator Obama’s experience and judgment.
Given an Obama TV media barrage we have not witnessed since the last candidate to run without public financing, Richard Nixon in 1972, and the daily drumbeat about Obama’s chances, given their demographics, it is my sense these voters WILL vote in this election and WILL break decisively in our direction.
These undecided/refuse to respond voters breaking decisively against Senator Obama mirrors the pattern of the last two months of the Democrat primary season.
When they do break, I believe they will add a net three plus points to our margins.

You’ll see me make similar points in a soon-to-be posted edition of Red Meat, but I find it very plausible that the remaining undecided are going to disproportionately break for McCain. I think my liberal readers will agree that they see the case for Obama as obvious and self-evident, it’s a Democratic year in general, the incumbent Republican president is unpopular, and Obama has enjoyed significant advantages — his commercials are ubiquitous, his debate performances were at least adequate if not strong, his smiling face is staring out from almost every magazine (including Men’s Health, even though the man is a smoker), vast swaths of his press coverage are glowing, etc. If, after exposure to all of this, if you’re “undecided”, you probably just don’t want to vote for the guy and you just don’t want to tell a pollster.

So – take a look at some of the recent tracking polls. Rasmussen puts Obama at 50 percent, Gallup’s traditional voter model puts Obama at 49 percent, Gallup’s expanded model puts Obama at 51 percent, Hotline puts Obama at 49 percent, Zogby puts Obama at 49 percent, IBD/TIPP puts Obama at 47 percent, Battleground puts Obama at 49 percent, Ipsos puts Obama at 50 percent.

That’s pretty darn consistent, putting Obama at 49-51 with a few outliers. Give McCain most of the undecideds and we’re looking at a 52-48, 51-49, or a 50-50 vote split.

Will this help in the electoral college? Maybe; that’s fodder for another post. But it seems safe to conclude that a lot of Obama supporters, and a lot of media folk, are expecting an Obama margin a lot bigger than 0 to 4 percent.