Poll, Electoral College | featured news

Thursday's polls served to clarify that Barack Obama maintains a narrow lead in states that would get him to 270 electoral votes.

New polls released on Wednesday and Thursday continue to show President Barack Obama holding narrow leads in a handful of critical battleground states, but running within a whisker of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney nationwide.

Taking account of all the polls, rather than just one, the national race appears to be a virtual tie. At the state level, despite Romney making strong gains in some places over the past couple of weeks, Obama’s firewall in the electoral college is holding—for now, anyway.

President Obama maintains an edge in the race for 270 electoral college votes, according to a state-by-state Fix analysis, even as national polling suggests the race remains tight between the incumbent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.