WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama retained a slim lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll yesterday, as he appeared to have stemmed the bleeding from his poor first debate.
Three weeks before the November 6 US election, Obama leads Romney by 2 percentage points, with 47 per cent support from likely voters in the national online poll, to 45 per cent support for Romney.
The margin was small enough to be a virtual tie, but Obama’s slight edge broadened from Sunday, when he went ahead of Romney by 1 point after falling behind in the wake of Romney’s decisive victory in their first presidential debate on October 3.
“Romney received a bump from that first debate, but the very nature of a bump is it recedes again,” Ipsos vice president Julia Clark said. “We’re now seeing Obama regaining a little bit of a foothold as we go into the second debate. They go into the debate on equal footing.”
The two men meet again on Tuesday night at New York’s Hofstra University in a debate that Obama needs to win to grab back the campaign momentum. The third debate is set for October 22 in Boca Raton, Florida.
Obama’s support in the new Reuters/Ipsos survey was particularly strong among the 10 per cent of registered voters who have already cast their ballots. Fifty-five per cent said they voted for the Democrat, compared to 43 per cent for his Republican challenger.
Romney and his fellow Republicans have been hitting Obama hard over his handling of diplomatic security, blaming his administration for attacks in Egypt and Libya on September 11. The US ambassador and three other Americans were killed in Libya.
