Good Sunday morning. With just hours to go before residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire head to the polls, here's what Washington is watching today:

-- For weeks, we've preached a devotion to state-by-state polls instead of the national average. Remember, it's not a race for a majority of the popular vote, it's a race for 270 electoral votes. Then, as the national race appeared to tighten, polls showed Barack Obama leading by wider margins in battleground states. Now, as the national race is favoring Obama by wider margins, a rash of late polls are showing swing states tightening. A series of Mason-Dixon polls conducted for NBC News and a number of newspapers show John McCain closing gaps in Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and other must-win states.

-- Is it natural tightening? Or is John McCain staging a comeback? Despite the latest polls, most political watchers think it's neither. The Washington Post's Broder, Balz and Cillizza, leading the paper's must-read coverage today, write Obama is on his way to an historic win. Obama has significant leads in every state John Kerry won in 2004 and sizable leads in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Iowa, four states President Bush won that year. Obama also maintains narrow leads in Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida, any one of which would be a virtually impenitrable wall between McCain and the presidency.

-- Looking back on this election, we could find more parallels with 1992 than any other election. A younger and energetic Democrat is benefiting from a struggling economy while an older Republican hasn't yet found the proper weakness to exploit. In 1992, James Carville's famous claim that it's the economy explained why voters overlooked Bill Clinton's flaws and elected him. This year, concerns that Obama is a socialist or too inexperienced or any of the many angles McCain has tried are sticking in people's minds, but none of them are overtaking the economy in the minds of voters, the Boston Globe's Lisa Wangsness writes.

-- Wangsness writes from Rochester, Pennsylvania, a town like the ones McCain must win for a shot at the White House. In the last several weeks, the race has closed in Pennsylvania by a significant margin, down from a high of 14 to today's 7.0-point margin for Obama in the latest RCP Average. But seven points, fueled by a groundswell of voter turnout in Philadelphia and the so-called collar counties, is still a formidable lead, and McCain still has a big hill to climb.

-- McCain's troubles were evident yesterday when Vice President Dick Cheney appeared at a rally in his home state of Wyoming to endorse the GOP ticket. Cheney's kind words for his longtime intraparty rival made easy fodder for a new ad the Obama campaign has launched, the latest salvo in their largely successful effort to tie McCain to the current administration, the Wall Street Journal's Amy Chozick writes. President Bush's job approval rating is at just 25%, while a shocking 9.8% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction. That's the albatross that could sink McCain's campaign.

-- In fact, the entire election is coming down to two people -- and John McCain isn't one of them. Undecided voters who walk into the booth have yet to make up their mind about Barack Obama. Most Americans have made up their minds about McCain, but many have yet to come to a conclusion about Obama. Weighing on those voters' minds will be President Bush and his singular unpopularity. For months, Republicans have insisted the president's absence from the ballot would mitigate any negative impact he might otherwise have. Now, that no longer appears to be the case. In spite of Bush's absence from the trail, the plummeting economy is enough of a reminder to voters to hurt Republicans.

-- Leaks Of The Day: Yet again today, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was absent from the Sunday shows, skipping out completely during her candidacy. A serious grilling from the late Tim Russert could have given Palin a huge opportunity to prove herself, though she emerged on the national scene after Russert passed away. So who's next as host of NBC's Meet the Press? Speculation swirls around internal talent like Chuck Todd (Full disclosure: This reporter used to work for Todd), David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, and external names like Gwen Ifill, Katie Couric and Ted Koppel, the New York Times' Jacques Steinberg wrote on Friday.

-- Today On The Trail: Obama rallies in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati with wife Michelle today, while McCain focuses on events in Wallingford and Scranton, Pennsylvania, Peterborough, New Hampshire and Miami, Florida. Biden is in Tallahassee, Gainesville and Daytona Beach, Florida, and Palin has her own events in Canton, Marietta, Franklin County and Batavia, Ohio.