by Vera H-C Chan

With less than 100 days until the presidential elections, coverage has shifted from horse race monitoring to all-out war. Political observers have been focusing on key "battleground states." Figuring out just where those battles are may require a specially wired GPS attuned to indecisive voters.

About.com identifies Nevada, Michigan, Colorado, Ohio and Virginia as political military grounds. The primary epicenters, Iowa, Florida, and Ohio, are considered to have plenty of fight left in them. The AARP's Battleground Voter Survey throws New Mexico on its short list of feisty citizenry. At this rate, all 50 states might as well get into the brawl.

A random look at seven battleground states—Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virginia, and Wisconsin—finds an Obama search lead across the board over the past 30 days. More queries don't mean more popularity, but could mean more question marks about the candidates. Straight from the battleground, here are some searches from the past 30 days:

• Nevadans hold the biggest Search gap between the presidential rivals. Despite a sixfold lead over McCain, Obama has seen a 25% drop in Silver State searches in the past month, while McCain raised his queries up 45%.

• Among the seven, Michiganites were the most into the "paris hilton mccain ad."

• Ohio has been monitoring anti-Obama sites like "obama audacity watch," "obama nation," and the tipsy "get drunk and vote for mccain" blog.

• Perhaps to prepare for Obama's visit, Democratic Convention host Colorado registered a 107% uptick for "barack obama website." In general, the populace is into glossy covers, as in "new yorker obama cover" and "vanity fair mccain cover."

• Michigan and Virginia offered up the most varied Obama searches, as residents followed Obama's moves in Germany, tuned in to the "ludacris obama song" controversy, covered his New Yorker brouhaha, observed his birthday, looked into the RNC's "obama audacity watch" site, and investigated again the "obama muslim" connection.

• Sisterhood searches spiked in Ohio, Michigan, and Virginia after Michelle Obama accepted an honorary membership into black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha.