Presidential Polls 2012: Obama, Romney In Dead Heat
With just more than two weeks until Election Day on Nov. 6, most nationwide polls show President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney in a deadlock in their competition for the presidency.
A new poll released Sunday and conducted as a joint effort by NBC and The Wall Street Journal shows the candidates tied with 47 percent of support each from the likely voters surveyed.
Discussing the poll during Sunday's edition of "Meet the Press," NBC correspondent Chuck Todd said the tie at 47 percent may be a good sign for Romney and the Republican party, but that isn't exactly the case for President Obama.
"Sitting at 47 is a good number for a challenger, but not a good number for an incumbent," Todd said.
But the imprecise nature of election polling means that other surveys show different results. Even a separate poll conducted solely by The Wall Street Journal found that among a larger sample of registered voters, Obama takes an advantage over Romney with support from 49 percent of voters surveyed, compared to 44 percent for the GOP nominee.
Obama's campaign advisor David Axelrod appeared on Sunday's "Meet the Press" and acknowledged the wide various among different polls, adding that the Obama 2012 team always expected the race to be tight, even this close to Election Day.
"If you look at the early voting that's going on around the country, it's very robust and it's very favorable to us. And we think that's a better indicator than these public polls, which are frankly ... all over the map," Axelrod said.
Axelrod's words certainly seem to ring true, considering the wide range of results among other polls. Though a Real Clear Politics average of all national polls reaffirms the NBC/Wall Street Journal numbers with each candidate at 47 percent, numbers from polling firm Rasmussen show Romney ahead of Obama by 2 points, 49 percent to 47 percent.
