Barack Obama, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

A recent Rasmussen survey showed Obama's support in Missouri at 47% compared to 46% for Romney.

Aides say both acceptance speeches were meticulously written and rewritten, with the White House even vetting some lines through focus groups. Perhaps that caution was the problem, because -- as many commentators pointed out -- neither speech seemed to attain the soaring resonance of remarks delivered by other speakers at the same two conventions.

"It took 10 years to get out of the Great Depression," said [Ross] Baker. He said people shouldn't be surprised "if this recovery is half as long..." But, [Nigel] Gault added, "I'm more optimistic that whoever wins the presidency, the next four years will be much better than the past four years."

As the Democratic convention came to a close, 35.7 million people watched President Obama make his case for a second term... By comparison, Mitt Romney's speech accepting the GOP nomination on Aug. 30 drew an audience of about 30.3 million TV viewers, according to Nielsen.

President Barack Obama regained some footing and overtook his Republican rival Mitt Romney in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, a day after the end of the Democratic convention.

President Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night ranked as the biggest political moment ever on the social media site Twitter.

President Obama said Friday that the job growth reflected in the latest employment report is “not good enough” but suggested things would get better quicker if Congress would cooperate.

The economy added only 96,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department reported this morning; Republicans quickly pounced on the slow job growth, the morning after the Democrats wrapped up their convention in Charlotte.

U.S. employers added 96,000 jobs last month, a weak figure that could slow any momentum President Barack Obama hoped to gain from his speech to the Democratic National Convention. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, but only because more people gave up looking for work. The government only counts people as unemployed if they are actively searching.

Vice President Joe Biden speaks to the DNC audience about how President Barack Obama handles adversity.