In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, said Wednesday he will shave off his mustache “of 40 years” on national television if Obama loses Minnesota, Michigan or Pennsylvania on Election Day. 
  
 Axelrod bet Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” that Obama would win all three states, which have trended Democratic in recent contests. Mitt Romney’s campaign insists all three are now in play. 
  
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 “I will come on ‘Morning Joe’ and I will shave off my mustache of 40 years if we lose any of those three states,” Axelrod said. 
  
 (Also on POLITICO: Poll: Voters say Obama will win) 
  
 Axelrod then challenged Scarborough to grow mustache if Obama won any of those states, a wager the former GOP congressman rejected. Scarborough counter-offered, saying he would grow a mustache - for the first time - if Obama wins either North Carolina or Florida. Axelrod agreed to her terms. 
  
 Polls indicate Axelrod’s upper lip might be safer than Scarborough’s. 
  
 A Detroit News poll released Tuesday found Obama leading in Michigan, 48 percent to 45 percent. A Minneapolis Star-Tribune poll found similar results in Minnesota, with Obama ahead by 47 percent to 44 percent. And Obama is on top by 4 percentage points in a poll of Pennsylvania released Tuesday. 
  
 While North Carolina appears safer for Romney — the former Massachusetts governor led 50 percent to 45 percent in a SurveyUSA poll on Tuesday — Scarborough’s home state of Florida is a toss-up. A New York Times/CBS poll released Wednesday has Obama clinging to a 1-point lead, 50 percent to 49 percent. 
  
 Other Democrats joined Axelrod in wagering. 
  
 “I will dye my hair black and wear a fake mustache if they win Pennsylvania, Michigan or New Mexico,” Obama campaign press secretary Jen Psaki, a redhead, said on MSNBC. 
  
 And Democratic consultant Joe Trippi made an audacious bet: “I’ll shave my head on FOX,” wrote Trippi, a Fox News contributor. He deleted the message soon after. 
  
 Reporters also chimed in on Twitter. ABC News’ Jake Tapper suggested Axelrod shave “just the left half o’ the stache.” Yahoo! News’ Chris Moody joked he “would have to be biased” now that Axelrod was offering to shave. 
  
 “He can’t shave it! It’s almost Movember!” Moody wrote, referring to a mustache-growing charity event that is held in November to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues. ||||| As if Hurricane Sandy weren’t doing enough to muddle the presidential race a week before the election, the two campaigns now seem to be embracing two sharply different versions of political reality. 
  
 The Mitt Romney narrative: The electoral map is expanding and we are on the march. Minnesota and Pennsylvania — blue states that neither campaign had been paying attention to — are tightening and if such patterns hold up, we could win a smashing victory with over 300 electoral votes. 
  
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 reset POLITICO “Winners” series: Romney ads POLITICO “Winners” series: Obama ads 
  
 (PHOTOS: Final countdown to Election Day) 
  
 The Barack Obama side: There they go again. This is 2008 in replay mode, when John McCain had no path to 270 electoral votes and made a desperate gambit to try and put Pennsylvania in play. Romney needs to project Big Mo to paper over his struggles in the core battleground states. Nice head fake Mitt — but we don’t buy it. 
  
 Which side is blowing smoke? The truth of the matter rests, as it usually does, somewhere in the middle. 
  
 In the post-FEC limits era, when both candidates are free to raise and spend freely, money is not the object it has always been in campaigns. So with the dollars flowing in, Romney’s high command can take a look at single-digit deficits in states like Minnesota and Pennsylvania and lay down some cash on TV there, as they have in recent days. The best-case scenario is that you goose the polling a little more and, if the wind blows heavily in your direction during the campaign’s final days, you pull out a narrow win in one or both of these traditionally Democratic states. The worst-case scenario is that you’ve burned a few bucks you could afford to lose in a state you didn’t need and made Obama drop his own cash in service of creating the perception that Democrats are on the defensive. 
  
 (Also on POLITICO: How to campaign after a disaster) 
  
 “It’s like buying a cheap lotto ticket with a little extra money,” explained longtime GOP strategist Mike Murphy. “Their day job is still, ‘How do we win Virginia and Ohio and get one more?’” 
  
 And the fact that Romney went up on Pennsylvania TV so triumphantly, issuing a press release entitled “Ever Expanding Map: PA,” suggests that his campaign wants the idea that they’re competing there broadcast as much as they actually want to compete there. 
  
 “It’d be one thing to take a quiet flyer,” said senior Obama adviser David Plouffe. “But they are playing it up, just like McCain in 2008.” 
  
 (Also on POLITICO: Swing-state map) 
  
 Romney, Plouffe argued, is “talking about electoral paths that don’t exist.” |||||
This election's shaping up to be a close shave, and David Axelrod is taking that idiom literally. On Joe Scarborough's Morning Joe, the president's mustachioed adviser vowed to bare his upper lip for an uncurious world to see if Obama loses Michigan, Minnesota, or Pennsylvania, reports Politico. As a counteroffer, Scarborough said he'd grow his first mustache if Obama wins North Carolina or Florida. Judging by recent polls, it's more likely Axelrod's facial hair will stay safe. Meanwhile, Politico also points out that Obama and Romney have two very different outlooks on these battleground states, even with only one week left before the election. Romney's camp says that he could lock up Pennsylvania and Minnesota, traditionally blue states, but Obama's team says the other guys are playing it up to make it look like they still have a chance, like McCain did in 2008.