For starters, the commercial does feature Latinos — the picture is of three Mexican men in Mexico. But Angle went further, commenting on the appearance of the students in the room, who were all members of the Hispanic Student Union. “I don’t know that all of you are Latino,” she said. “Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”

Here’s a screenshot of the ad, which is no longer available on YouTube because of a claim by Getty Images. The photographer who took the photo told The Washington Post on Oct. 8 that the image was available on Getty only for editorial work, not for advertisements.

Angle’s argument seems to be that the ad could not be anti-Latino because her campaign did not purposefully pick a picture of Latinos. “Sharron has said several times before that illegal immigration is not about race, it is about the rule of law in this country,” her spokesman told the Los Angeles Times.

Reid, however, has brought up racial issues in arguing against Angle. “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK?” Reid told a group of Latino voters in August. “Do I need to say more?”

Following two other polls released this week that showed McCain’s lead over Sen. Barack Obama shrinking drastically, a survey conducted by Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism and KAET-TV finds Obama trails McCain by just two percentage points, 44 percent to McCain’s 46 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.

The Arizona Republic reports that the McCain campaign remains confident it will win the state and chalks up the poll results to Obama’s efforts to “buy the election.”

“John McCain has never lost an election in Arizona, and this one will be no different, regardless of Obama’s attempt to buy the election with millions of dollars in advertising,” spokesman Jeff Sadosky said in an e-mailed statement.

While Obama is greatly outspending McCain on advertising nationally, this fails to explain the trend in Arizona, as neither campaign appears to be targeting much, if any, advertising at The Grand Canyon State.

As I have noted before, I live in the Phoenix area, and I have yet to see a single advertisement from either campaign on TV, with the exception of those aired nationally on the cable news networks. I have also not received any mailings or robo-calls from the presidential campaigns.

If Obama is making inroads in Arizona, he is doing it without advertising or visiting the state — which may say quite a bit about the trajectory of this race.