Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention | featured news

New polling by Reuters/Ipsos indicates that during the past two weeks - since just after the Democratic National Convention - support for Romney among Americans age 60 and older has crumbled, from a 20-point lead over Democratic President Barack Obama to less than 4 points.

New polls in four battleground states show President Obama holding a lead of 5 to 7 points over Republican nominee Mitt Romney, reinforcing the national surveys that indicate that the incumbent gained ground with his convention last week.

The three national tracking polls that were published on Friday all moved toward President Obama, probably reflecting momentum from the Democratic convention.

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.

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.

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.

President Obama is framing his case for re-election by counseling patience for a stronger economy that still may be years away.