Vice President Joe Biden and his challenger on the Republican ticket, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, debated on live TV late Thursday night in Danville, Kentucky. But even before that, their higher-ups, the two tenors at the top of the tickets, President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney, were busy prepping for their second presidential match up. Romney's performance in last week's presidential debate has helped him in the polls. His uptick continued all through this week, with one Reuters polls showing Romney ahead by three points over Obama (47 percent to 44%). Obama knows he has no choice but to actually show up at the next debate (in the previous debate he was all-but absent). Romney has all the reasons to remain upbeat: he outpolls Obama nationally among likely voters; in Wisconsin, Virginia and Colorado three important swing states two thirds of respondents said he was more qualified to be a leader. But Obama has much to take comfort from as well, despite his poor performance last week, primarily because Romney has not been able to pull ahead in these three states. Obama still commands a lead in Virginia and Wisconsin. In Colorado, the two are in a statistical dead heat. Obama may still be in the game because of the recent jobs report which showed unemployment dropped below 8% for the first time in 33 months, standing at 7.8% in September. While Romney second-guessed the accuracy of that figure, it nonetheless has a psychological effect on voters. But despite the good news, at next week's debate (which will cover foreign policy) Obama will have to address a very embarrassing development surrounding the investigation into the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya last month. The administration has recently made a 180 degree U-turn on the assassination in Benghazi; it no longer views the attack as a "spontaneous reaction" to the now-famous anti-Muslim YouTube clip but as an act of terrorism. Why did it take the administration eight days to figure this out, asked one analyst on the Daily Beast- So who is ahead in this race? Or as The New York Times put it, "Is Romney Leading Right Now-" To answer this question you have to look at both the national polls and the state-by-state polls. Coupled together these two sets of data can give us a sense of the likely winner of the Electoral College, whose vote is what ultimately counts in these elections. Each campaign has been highlighting the polls that had their candidate fare better, for obvious reasons. According to The New York Times' Nate Silver, "Mr. Romney may have increased his chances of becoming president by 15 or 20 percent based on one night in Denver. " Obama, however, may be encouraged by his slight, albeit a tightening, lead in the 11 battleground states. Momentum has shifted to Romney since last week's debate, but on Thursday night's vice presidential debate Biden worked overtime to have the Democrats retake the initiative; he kept attacking Ryan while putting on a smile. The no. 2 guy on the Republican ticket tried to avoid his tendency to appear too wonkish when he talked numbers and statistics. The most interesting fact will be made available only on Nov. 6. Until then it's just statistics.
