Yesterday, CNN’s John King set off a firestorm of buzz across the political world with the news that top officials in the John McCain campaign believed that New Mexico, Colorado and Iowa are lost causes.

This morning, New Mexico Independent reporter Heath Haussamen said, not so fast — McCain is still making a play for New Mexico. In fact, it looks more and more likely that McCain will be making a campaign appearance in southern New Mexico soon.

The RNC is pushing back on the idea as well, according to MSNBC’s First Read:

The combined spending of the campaign and the reported spending of the RNC IE shows us outspending Obama by about $100K per week. In addition, the numbers — public and private — in the SW have swung wildly. We believe the possibility of NV or NM breaking at the last minute is likely and we have our dominos lined up to knock down the win at the last minute.

The question is: Is this true?

According to the advertising numbers from TNS Media Intelligence, via Daily Kos, the answer is “no.”

In the numbers from Oct. 6-12, the RNC had yet to put money into a New Mexico media buy for McCain. McCain spent $320,000 that week. Meanwhile, the Barack Obama campaign spent $898,000 in the same time period. The week previous, however, McCain spent $297,000 to Obama’s $198,000. Perhaps this is where the McCain numbers came from. But the RNC did not spend any money in that week either.

In the polling, it is not clear where the RNC is getting their assertions either. While their private numbers may show McCain gaining — and this is probably true if McCain is set to make a visit to southern New Mexico this weekend — the public numbers do not show any such movement toward McCain.

The last three polls, as reported by Pollster.com, show Obama leading by 13 percent, 7 percent and 7 percent.

No poll since mid-August has shown Obama below 45 percent just as no poll in the same time period has shown McCain over 45 percent. Even the one poll that shows Obama at 45 percent, The Albuquerque Journal poll, shows a five percent lead over McCain. In fact, the polling shows McCain consistently polling between 40 percent and 45 percent. Meanwhile, six of the last nine polls show Obama between 51 percent and 53 percent; two show Obama under those numbers and one above.

Other southwestern battleground states show similar trends: The Pollster.com trendline shows a large lead in Colorado developing since mid-September. From the same time period, Obama began leading in Nevada according to the Pollster.com trendline.