Is Arizona Close? (UPDATE)

Update: We have our first poll of the 2010 Senate race.

"If the 2010 election for U.S. Senate were held today for whom would you vote for if the choices were between [current governor] Janet Napolitano the Democrat and John McCain the Republican?"

Janet Napolitano - 53
John McCain - 45

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Arizona has tightened rather dramatically in the last four or five days. On 10/24 I showed McCain up by 17.5 and ranked as the 45th bluest state. By 10/29 it had closed to 6.2 and reached #35. This didn't raise too many alarms, because pollsters have largely seen AZ as a waste of time this cycle, so either result could have been an outlier based on a lack of good polling data. But with over a half dozen polls in the last week, and the state now at McCain +4.3, what is going on? The media of course loves this story because it shows Obama's dominance reaching so far as to hit McCain's home state. So I just wanted to clear things up.

You can see there was no polling for a while (between 9/29 and 10/18). Then all of the sudden this one poll came up showing McCain only up 2, and the pollsters invaded.

Well, here's chill-pill time. Even if I drop all the pre-10/18 polls, McCain is still up 3.75. And as we've already seen today, it would be difficult for me to call that a swing state. Obama's never led a poll here, he slightly underperformed in the primary, and he has no ground game of any kind in the state. I'd still call this one Safe McCain, but I'll keep an eye out.

Update: Interestingly, SurveyUSA has not polled AZ since 02/28. Of all pollsters with more than 10 polls this year (and they've probably put out around 150) they are the best-rated pollster on 538, so if they say anything interesting in the next day or two, I'll definitely drop a line.

Here's a sloppy screenshot: