McCain at home, Obama overseas

With Barack Obama travelling the world this week with the three major news anchors in tow, the Democratic candidate is the story and John McCain is fighting hard to be heard and strongly denouncing the enthralled media coverage afforded to his opponent. 

On his website you can watch and vote for two videos which expose the media bias. This is the one which has received most votes :

I think that it is fair to say that the media were/are quite enamored with Obama, but I think we should be careful about the actual date of broadcast of these soundbites : I believe some of them are at least several months old. 

There's now a lot of talk of how in the end Obama is just another politician, how he has changed his mind on important issues (gun rights, surveillance, Irak?). These comments are coming both from the right ( read an article from a conservative webzine American Thinker) and from the left (read Robert Sheer's article on The Nation's website.)

And last I'd like to address the question raised by Laetitia a couple weeks ago now : can Barack Obama win the election. The polls have had him ahead of John McCain for some time now, although his lead is declining, as reported by American Thinker, what I beleive is a right wing media. More significantly the issue is : does a lead in the polls mean anything? It might mean less than what the Democrats hope it means, as explained by NPR's Juan William. 

These are the things we want to keep in mind when trying to ascertain the final November result : 

• Elections are won by the candidate with the most electoral votes not by the winner of the popular vote. Some States are expected to be very close race and some traditional red States might even vote Democratic ( Virginia, Ohio), and all the "swing states" (Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania) will be crucial. The race is thus more local/statewide than it is national. The candidates will pick battle ground States and invest a lot there to turn the vote in their favour. 
• Certain electoral groups are yet undecided and may well support one or the other candidate. Amongst them, one should mention : Hispanics and white working class males. Even the evangelical voting block, as far as it exists, is being hotly contested by the candidates. 

Is this the easy way around your question, Laetitia? It probably is, but I don't feel very comfortable in making predictions and am more interested in the process and understanding how each candidate can create the magic winning coalition of forces.