A liittle bit of McCain's internal polling revealed

From the Wall Street Journal:

In Memo, McCain’s Top Pollster Sees Tighter Race
Elizabeth Holmes reports from battleground Pennsylvania on the presidential race.

"John McCain’s campaign has seen “significant” progress in internal polling in the last week, Republican pollster Bill McInturff said Tuesday, with notable strides among rural voters and soft Democrats.

McInturff, the campaign’s chief pollster, made a case for the viability of the campaign in a memo to the strategy team, which was released to the media late Tuesday. The campaign has seen the race between McCain and Barack Obama move “significantly over the past week,” McInturff said. “All signs say we are headed to an election that may easily be too close to call by next Tuesday.”

To be sure, public polling data both nationally and in battleground states tell a different story. Obama has a several-point lead nationally and has broken the 50% barrier in many battleground states.

But each campaign conducts extensive polling of its own and, according to McInturff, the McCain campaign has reason to be hopeful.

“The strongest sub-groups for McCain are non-college men and rural voters of both genders,” McInturff said. The campaign has also seen more reason to hope that they will get more than a “20% chunk” of soft Democrats. “Wal-Mart women,” which the campaign describes non-college-educated women in households making less than $60,000 a year, are “swinging back solidly,” McInturff said.

Undecided voters make up about 8% of the electorate in battleground states, McInturff said, and represent an older, rural and economically challenged voter bloc. McInturff said their surveys had found them to be “quite negative” and “seek change,” but tend to skew Republican."

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/28/in-memo-mccains-top-pollster-sees-tighter-race/