Barack Obama pulled slightly ahead of Mitt Romney in a Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll yesterday, but the race remains essentially tied. Obama led Romney among likely voters by a statistically insignificant margin of 1 percentage point, 47 per cent to 46 per cent. The four-day online tracking poll includes some responses taken after the final debate, but the full impact will not register for several days.
Obama maintains a larger advantage in the state-by-state battle. Ipsos projects that Obama holds an edge in the most hotly contested states, including Florida, Virginia and Ohio, and is likely to win by a relatively comfortable margin of 332 electoral votes to 206 electoral votes. But a substantial portion of voters remain up for grabs. Roughly 20 per cent of those surveyed say they could switch their votes, or have not yet made up their minds. – (Reuters)