A few days ago Obama’s people were talking about how western states, which traditionally trend toward Republican presidents, were in play for The One.

LAS VEGAS - Americans have trekked West in search of riches for more than 150 years — and Barack Obama is doing the same.

Like the country’s original frontier settlers, the Democratic presidential hopeful is driven to this Republican-leaning region by a sense of opportunity — and a quest for power.

He desperately wants to win in GOP rival John McCain’s domain, and is playing hard in fast-growing Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico while watching, likely in vain, for a potential opening in Arizona — the state his opponent represents in the Senate.

“This region is very much in play,” said Brian Sanderoff, a nonpartisan pollster in Albuquerque, N.M. “The fact that McCain is a westerner from a nearby state will be offset by the Democratic mood of the nation, thereby making the race really competitive in the West.”

The problem is that, according to recent polling, the western states Obama wants so badly to win really aren’t in play for him at all.  A poll of 400 likely voters in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming showed that 50% of respondents had a favorable view of McCain while just 37% had a favorable view of Obama.  What’s more, just 27% of poll respondents had an unfavorable view of McCain while a full 40% of them had an unfavorable view of Obama.

For the whole region, 48% of likely voters would vote for McCain if the election were held today while just 39% would vote for Obama.  Of the states polled in, the only lead Obama has is in Colorado where 46% of poll respondents say they’d vote for Obama with 43% saying they’d vote for McCain.  But even that slim lead is within the margin of error for Obama.

Maybe Obama will have more of a chance as he refocuses campaign resources from states like North Dakota, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Alaska, Georgia and Montana which he now seems to be conceding, but I doubt it.

Obama is no moderate.  He’s a far-left liberal, in fact the most liberal Democrat in the Senate during his short stint there, and the campaign map is likely to reflect that.  He may be attempting a “50 state strategy” but in order for that to work you have to actually appeal to voters in all 50 states.

As Obama learned in those states like North Dakota where he’s pulling his ad, the more some voters learn about him the less they like him.