Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain is circling the wagons.

The Republican presidential candidate, with few prospects in Democratic-leaning states, is struggling to hold on to the states George W. Bush won in 2004.

Iowa and New Mexico, where Bush got the narrowest of victories in the last election, are moving into Obama's column. That would shave 12 electoral votes from Bush's 2004 total of 286 -- 270 are needed to claim the White House.

Meanwhile, the blue states McCain has targeted for an Electoral College cushion, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, increasingly look like an uphill climb. He is trailing even in New Hampshire, which he viewed almost as a home state after winning two primaries there.

Obama, 47, is surprisingly competitive in the reliably Republican states of Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana. He's slightly ahead in the big swing states of Ohio and Florida and is running even in Missouri. Obama also is holding a consistent lead in national polls, with an average margin of 7 percentage points, according to figures compiled by RealClearPolitics.com

Republican campaign strategists say there is no electoral map to victory for McCain that doesn't include Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina.

``Without those five locked in, all it is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,'' Republican consultant and pollster Tony Fabrizio said.

Ed Rollins, political director in Ronald Reagan's White House, said that if McCain, 72, doesn't engage more on the economy, ``he's going to have three weeks of nobody paying any attention to him.''

Rollins said the Arizona senator needs to do ``something really drastic,'' such as making a pledge to serve only one term so that he can deal with the economic crisis without regard to political consequences.

John Feehery, a Republican strategist formerly with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, said such a move would backfire.

``That would put all the focus on Palin,'' Feehery said, referring to McCain's running mate, the governor of Alaska. ``He needs the focus to be on Barack Obama, not Sarah Palin.''

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One of the telling signs about the fight over the Electoral College map is where Obama has chosen to prepare for the televised debates. To get ready for his last confrontation with McCain on Oct. 15 in Hempstead, New York, the Illinois senator will stay in Toledo, Ohio, conveniently located near both Indiana and Michigan.

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Congressional Democrats say they're within striking distance of the magic number: 60 Senate seats that would give them a filibuster-proof majority.

New York Senator Charles Schumer, who's heading the Senate campaign, counts races in five states where Democratic candidates are ``significantly ahead'' and poised to gain seats: Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Alaska.

In North Carolina and Oregon Democrats have narrow leads, and in Mississippi and Minnesota the races are even, he said. That gets the party to nine. So this week Schumer added Georgia and Kentucky to his list of races to keep an eye on.

In Kentucky, Democrats are trying to unseat Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. In Georgia, the target is first- term Republican Saxby Chambliss. A few of the recent polls show the challengers within a few percentage points.

``We're doing extremely well in places we didn't expect to do well,'' Schumer said.

Even though Democrats count 51 seats in their current majority, they'll need more than nine to get to 60.

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, now caucuses with Democrats, though he threw his lot in with McCain. If Democrats enlarge their majority, they are expected to strip him of his committee chairmanship.

``They'd better get 10,'' said Marcus Pohlmann, a political science professor at Rhodes College in Memphis. ``That's the only way to be safe.''

In the House, Democrats are benefiting from the wave of voter angst over the economy. The non-partisan Cook Political Report has upped its forecast of Democratic gains to between 15 and 25 seats come November.

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Joe Biden has a fallback position.

Along with being No. 2 on the Democratic ticket, he's running to keep the Delaware Senate seat he's held since 1972. He is the overwhelming favorite over Christine O'Donnell, a Republican who's never held elective office.

He's still putting his time in the state and has raised at least $14.5 million for his Senate campaign. Biden, 65, campaigned there last week and is returning Monday to headline the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Dover, according to his Senate campaign spokesman Alexander Snyder-Mackler.

Should Biden win both his Senate election and the vice presidency, Democratic Governor Ruth Ann Minner will pick his replacement. Biden's son Beau, 39, Delaware's attorney general, would be a favorite to get the nod. There's a major complication that may be a disqualifier: Beau Biden is a captain in Delaware's Army National Guard and set to go off on a yearlong deployment to Iraq.

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Attendees at the second presidential debate discovered one of the pitfalls of having such an event on the campus of a Christian college that normally is dry -- no souvenir mugs.

Officials at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, didn't want the school's logo appearing along side that of debate sponsor Anheuser-Busch Cos.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Sobczyk in Washington at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net; Edwin Chen in Washington at Echen32@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 11, 2008 09:28 EDT