The AP reports this afternoon that the Kerry campaign has canceled planned ad buys in four states previously considered to be up for grabs:

Bowing to political realities, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has canceled plans to begin broadcasting television commercials in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana and the perennial battleground of Missouri. ...

Ads were scheduled to begin airing Oct. 5 in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri as part of a $5 million investment through Nov. 2, but campaign advisers concluded Kerry isn't doing well enough in the states to justify the cost.

The campaign, which has reserved commercial time in 20 states through Election Day, notified television stations in the four states that Kerry would not follow through on his plans for the first week of October.

Plans are still in place to air ads starting the second week of October, campaign officials said, but those will likely be tabled, too.

Many people have been saying that the polling done so far this month has been anomalous, with the growing lead of Bush either an illusion or simply a momentary bounce. But with Kerry's internals falling like a rock and the debacle of the Killian forgeries still reverberating, Democrats show that their own pollsters see much the same results as Time, Newsweek, Gallup, and CBS: Kerry is in a free fall. They need to consolidate their money on states in which they have a chance to prevail, and as this new strategy shows, that list keeps getting smaller and smaller.

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