Click here to watch "Fence."

Updated Friday, Oct. 16, 2008.

The Republican Party's national committees are pulling ads in key presidential battleground states and in a hotly contested Senate race, in just the latest sign of the GOP's sinking electoral fortunes.

The Republican National Senatorial Committee is pulling its ads from the Louisiana Senate race, where state Treasurer John Kennedy's challenge to two-term Sen. Mary Landrieu is considered the GOP's best shot to unseat an incumbent Democrat.

NRSC communications director Rebecca Fisher declined to discuss the timing of the pullout. But Leonardo Alcivar, the Kennedy campaign's communications director, was blunt in his assessment of the Republican committee's decision to withdraw.

"They need to help fund incumbents who two weeks ago were not vulnerable and now are," he said. "It’s a reflection of the national political landscape and not the local political landscape."

Alcivar added that his campaign has already benefited from the NRSC's support, and that Kennedy has the resources to compete with and win against Landrieu in the home stretch.

The most recent poll in that race, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Sept. 27, showed Landrieu with a commanding 54-41 lead over the Republican challenger.

Hannah August, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the Republican committee's retreat reaffirmed the DSCC's confidence heading toward Election Day.

"They essentially gave up their only alleged seat to pick up," she said. "I think they've realized that Mary Landrieu is in a strong position to win re-election. We've been saying it all along."

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee will stop running presidential ads in Maine and Wisconsin, AP reported Wednesday. The move comes as John McCain's poll numbers continue to slide in the Upper Midwest: Barack Obama leads the Arizona senator by 17 percentage points in Wisconsin, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday. The committee's withdrawal from Wisconsin comes on the heels of McCain's decision to essentially concede defeat in Michigan two weeks ago.

Maine is one of two states that awards its electoral votes along congressional district lines, and McCain hopes to pick off a vote in the relatively conservative 2nd District. Despite the committee's move, the McCain campaign isn't writing the Pine Tree State off yet: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin rallied supporters in Bangor this morning and hinted at her campaign's desire to nab one of the state's electoral votes.

UPDATE: The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reports that the NRSC is also planning to pull its ad dollars from the Colorado Senate race by next week. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., is leading Republican Bob Shaffer 54-40 in an Quinnipiac University poll released Oct. 14.