2012 Presidential Election, Poll | featured news

President Barack Obama's lead over challenger Mitt Romney has narrowed to just two percentage points since the Republican's strong performance in their first debate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday.

Wednesday night's debate holds the potential to nudge the polling numbers in a race that has given President Barack Obama a narrow lead throughout 2012, but the chances of a debate that will turn the race upside down are slim. Voters are expressing strong interest in watching the debates. A poll by Quinnipiac found that 93 percent of likely voters planned to watch at least some of the debate.

Romney built much of his convention around Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comments, but only 32 percent were impacted negatively by them. Meanwhile, more viewed the remarks as a positive, and 62 percent either saw them as a positive or weren’t impacted by them at all.

Here's one program candidates aren't likely to mess with: The Medicare prescription drug plan. A new poll sponsored by a health care group shows that 90% of seniors are satisfied with the program known as Medicare Part D, and approval has constantly risen since the plan came on line in 2006.

President Obama retains a lead in Ohio, but his race with Republican Mitt Romney has tightened in the key states of Florida and Virginia, says a new poll. Obama leads Romney 51%-43% in Ohio, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College Poll. The two candidate are locked in a statistical tie in Florida, where Obama leads 47%-46%, and in Virginia, where the president is ahead 48%-46%.

On the eve of the first presidential debate, a flurry of new polls suggest most Americans support clean energy and policies to reduce climate change — topics that have garnered scant attention on the campaign trail.

Five weeks to Election Day, President Barack Obama is within reach of the 270 electoral votes needed to win a second term. Republican Mitt Romney's path to victory is narrowing. To overtake Obama, Romney would need to quickly gain the upper hand in nearly all of the nine states where he and Obama are competing the hardest.

President Obama leads Republican nominee Mitt Romney 49% to 45% in the battleground state of Iowa.

After a secretly recorded videotape was released on Sept. 17 showing Mitt Romney making unflattering comments about the “47 percent” of Americans who he said had become dependent on government benefits, I suggested on Twitter that the political impact of the comments could easily be overstated.

President Obama's job approval rating and level of voter support have reached the critical 50% point, according to Gallup, but there is still plenty of opportunity for the White House race to fluctuate. Gallup says Obama's job approval rating stands at 51%. At the same time, the president leads Mitt Romney 50%-44% among registered voters in the daily tracking poll -- similar to where the race stood after the Democratic convention this month.