Presidential Polls 2012: Obama, Romney Still Close Leading Up To Final Presidential Debate
It seems Americans are still pretty evenly divided in the 2012 presidential election, and Monday evening's third and final presidential debate marks the candidates' last chance to shut down his opponent before Election Day.
President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have been in a virtual dead heat ever since the first presidential debate, when Romney surprised the country with what most pundits saw as his defeat of Obama.
National polling firm Rasmussen reported in its daily tracking update Monday that Romney has a slight lead on the president, with the GOP nominee getting support from 49 percent of voters polled and Obama with support from 47 percent. Of the remaining respondents, 2 percent prefer a different candidate and 2 percent are undecided.
But that poll doesn't take the Electoral College into account. According to Rasmussen's projections for that voting system, Obama currently has 237 electoral votes in his pocket, just a hair above Romney's 235. A total of 66 electoral votes are still too close to project one way or another, according to the data. A candidate must garner 270 or more electoral votes to claim the presidency.
Rasmuessen's analytical summary on Sunday explained that Obama's standout performance in the second presidential debate still has not given him a boost over Romney, as was expected, but it has stopped the president's numbers from continually falling.
"These numbers are unchanged from the morning of the second presidential debate. They suggest that the president's stronger performance in that debate stopped his slide in the polls but did not regain lost ground," the Rasmussen update explained. "The first debate had a bigger impact, changing the race from a two-point Obama advantage to a two-point Romney edge. Still, the race remains too close to call with just over two weeks to go."
