Is North Dakota a Battleground State?

At the bottom of my October 5th post on Going Negative, I mentioned an interest in seeing updated polls in North and South Dakota.

Well, look what we have here. A poll conducted Oct 6-8 has Obama leading 45-43. Now granted, this was conducted by Minnesota State University rather than one of the national pollsters, and is in sharp contrast to polls conducted by Rasmussen, American Research Group and Research 2000 in mid-September. However, those 3 polls were during the Sarah Palin honeymoon period and were in sharp contrast to polls conducted in July and August by the same national pollsters when it was being shown as a close battle.

Although some including electoral-vote.com consider this poll to be wrong or incredible, I think it is consistent with the response in other states over this period, but we haven't had a poll for almost a month in North Dakota. The incredible part was happening in the summer when Obama was close in a state that typically votes Republican by 20 points or more.

A Republican losing North Dakota is like a Democrat losing Rhode Island or Delaware. Not a big deal in the electoral college, but a sign that everything else is about to crumble.