An in-depth look at the campaign in Florida and the many reasons for Obama's surge there (538.com has him 71% likely to win the state):

Mr. McCain clearly could still win the state’s 27 electoral votes. But the battle in Florida is offering — on the widest stage of any of the contested primary states — an object lesson in the disparities in the resources, aggressiveness and political cunning that Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama are taking to contests across the country.

It is a case study of the troubles of the McCain campaign, the problems of its own making as well as those caused by forces beyond the campaign’s control, including a deeply troubled economy that is sharply driving up home foreclosures in many areas of the state. And it provides vivid evidence of the Obama campaign’s success in using its money and organizational skills to put Republicans on the defensive in once-safe states.

“He has the best political organization for a presidential campaign that I have ever seen here,” Tom Slade, a former state Republican chairman, said of Mr. Obama. “Bar none. He has run a phenomenally good campaign.”

Mr. Obama’s huge financial advantage has turned out to be more lopsided here than in any of the other contested states, displaying, in an outsized way, what Mr. McCain is facing in states like Colorado and Indiana.

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While McCain Looked Away, Florida Shifted

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: October 24, 2008

www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/us/politics/25florida.html

MIAMI — For Senator John McCain, it was not supposed to be this way. From a commanding lead last spring, in a state where Senator Barack Obama did not campaign in the primaries and only hired a state director in June, Mr. McCain is now locked in a neck-and-neck race for a trove of electoral votes that is vital to his hopes of victory.

His once-close relationship with Gov. Charlie Crist is reportedly strained. And Mr. Obama has blanketed the state with advertising and built a huge get-out-the-vote operation — on vivid display this week in the long lines for early voting. The sight dispirited Republican leaders here.