Today's Arizona Republic offers a textbook example of the media's irresistible desire to create the drama of a horserace: "Pederson finds momentum in Senate race." Really? Where's the proof for that claim? Read the article and all you'll find is this:

Yes, he is on his third set of campaign inner-circle advisers, but he says his current team of young bare-knuckle go-getters was worth the wait. The first time he rolled through Sedona and Prescott last spring to campaign, only about five people showed up at either stop.

He has kept plugging away, and at this rally, in the middle of a workday, there are more than 50 fervent supporters cheering him on. Close to 100 meet him at another rally in Prescott on the same day.

It is this type of progress that fuels Pederson's disbelief in recent polls that have him consistently trailing by 9 to 10 points and buoys his belief that Arizona voters will turn out a three-term Republican incumbent.

Taking the word of the candidate who doesn't believe the polls is hardly solid ground for claiming he's got momentum. If Jon Kyl told the Arizona Republic he didn't believe the polls either and thought he was up by 20 points, would they run a headline that said "Kyl Crushing Pederson in Senate Race?" Obviously not.

If you look at the trendlines in the polls in this race, right now there is precious little evidence to suggest Pederson has "big mo." That's not to say definitively that Pederson doesn't have momentum or that he won't gain ground - indeed the natural tendency of any race is to tighten toward the end - only that the Arizona Republic offers nothing to support its claim.