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Pennsylvania is approaching the Nov. 6 presidential election with 3 percent fewer registered voters than in fall 2008, an unusual slip that political analysts blame on a drop in voter enthusiasm across the country. Democrats especially experienced a slump, bleeding 229,396 registered voters in Pennsylvania since the last presidential race, state data show. Republicans are down 112,796 registrants, but voters unconnected to either major party grew by 7 percent, or 73,043, according to Pennsylvania Department of State figures. As of Monday the state had 8,487,093 voters, down from 8,755,588 in November 2008, despite a 2 percent population gain. Democrats still...

Plenty of new swing-state polling this morning, and almost all of it looks bad for Barack Obama. Business Insider looks at NBC/Marist and CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac polling and concludes, “President Barack Obama has lost his advantage across the electoral map.” Let’s start with the NBC take on their swing-state polling: Romney saw his largest gain in Virginia, where he now edges the president 48 percent to 47 percent, a 3-point reversal from last week’s poll, released the day of the first presidential debate. The spread is within the poll’s margin of error. In Florida, before the debate, it was a 1-point race...

Mitt Romney's strong performance in the first presidential debate may have put Pennsylvania back in play, and closed the gap with President Obama in other battleground states. A Siena Research Institute Poll on Tuesday showed the Republican nominee trailing Mr. Obama by only three percentage points, 43 percent to 40 percent, in the Keystone State. Other polls prior to the debate had shown Mr. Obama with as much as a 12-point lead. "Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes suddenly appear to be up for grabs," said poll director Don Levy. "Romney not only has Republican support but now leads in vote-rich areas...

[TODAY] PORT ST. LUCIE, FL (WFLX) - Fresh off of a busy week of campaigning, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney prepares to make a stop along the Treasure Coast for a rally in Port St. Lucie on Sunday. The "Victory Rally with Mitt Romney, Port St. Lucie" event is put campaign crews into overdrive on Saturday as workers fought against the clock to prepare Tradition Square for crowds. "I'm wondering if there's going to be enough room?" said Cindy Mulleady, a Tradition resident. "I think we're going to have a much bigger turnout." The Romney campaign on Saturday said with...

Mitt Romney has now taken the lead in the swing state of New Hampshire. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in New Hampshire shows Romney with 48% support to President Obama’s 45%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Only one point separates Obama and Romney in the swing states. The states collectively hold 146 Electoral College votes and include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

CLEVELAND — If you switched on a television in northern Ohio this week, chances are you saw an ad for President Obama’s reelection campaign. Or two. Or three. Over and over again. Mitt Romney? Nothing. Obama’s Republican challenger has spent much of the summer racing around the country gathering campaign donations to pay for advertising. And the legal restraints that kept him from spending money raised for the general election were lifted a week ago, when the party officially nominated him for president. Yet for reasons that his advisors declined to discuss, Romney has ceded the advertising airwaves to Obama...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Voters in this year's key election battleground states are similar to registered voters nationally in the enthusiasm they express about voting in the 2012 presidential election. Just under half of swing-state voters, 46%, as well as 43% of national voters, report feeling extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. The new results are from the USA Today/Gallup Swing States poll, conducted June 22-29 as part of Gallup Daily tracking with 1,200 registered voters in 12 states where the presidential race is expected to be closely contested: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio,...

President Obama and Mitt Romney are statistically tied in Michigan, according to a poll from Mitchell Research released on Thursday. Obama leads Romney 47 percent to 46 in the poll, which has a 3.5 percent margin of error. It’s the fourth poll in June to show the candidates neck and neck in the Wolverine State, which has swung reliably Democratic in recent elections and where Obama was up by double digits as recently as mid-May. “Obama will have to campaign very heavily in Michigan, something he did not want to do,” said Mitchell Research Chairman Steve Mitchell in a statement....

The past month has seen the momentum of the 2012 presidential election shift significantly. The national race is now in a virtual dead heat, and most key swing states are within the margin of error. And most important, it appears that Mitt Romney has expanded the playing field to include some states previously thought to be securely in President Obama’s column—including, in my view, Pennsylvania. I base these conclusions on an analysis of surveys conducted since the beginning of June. Here’s what they show. (When there are multiple surveys, as there are in most cases, these figures represent averages.) Wisconsin...

Mitt Romney has caught President Obama in Michigan, according to a poll released Thursday. Obama still holds a slight edge in the poll, 46.9 to 45.5, but that’s within the survey’s 2.3 percent margin of error. The poll was conducted by Michigan-based political consultants Foster, McCollum, White & Associates. It’s the second straight poll to show Obama and Romney in a dead heat in the Wolverine State. Romney held a 1-point advantage in an EPIC-MRA poll released last week. Obama once had a commanding lead over Romney in Michigan, up by double digits as recently as mid-May, according to the...

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett points out a new Quinnipac poll of swing-state voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The poll is consistent with previous polling data on Obamacare, indicating that striking down all or part of Obamacare would not do great damage to the Supreme Court’s public image and perceived credibility.According to the poll, 53 percent of Florida voters, 52 percent of Ohio voters, and 46 percent of Pennsylvania voters think Congress should try to repeal the health-care law. This is notable for how far voters are willing to go in their opposition to Obamacare, when offered that...

Ah, it's good to be in full general-campaign mode, isn't it? Instead of having to play three-dimensional chess with polling numbers, with the head-to-head figures having to be calculated through the prism of a contested primary on one side, we're now entering into the clarity phase of polling. Mitt Romney has just begun to unite Republicans behind him, while Barack Obama has had an uncontested primary season, so the advantage still goes to Obama in polling ... and that's what has to be worrying Team Obama with the Quinnipiac polls from three swing states: Riding the voter perception that he...

If raising cash is the first presidential primary, the latest round of campaign filings contains early warning signs for Barack Obama in key states that were crucial to his election in 2008. Though he’s raised almost three times as much as Mitt Romney—the former governor of Massachusetts has brought in $32 million—the president is trailing his GOP rival in a handful of battleground states. In both Florida and Nevada, Romney nearly doubled the president’s haul, despite a crowded field of Republican candidates who are also vacuuming up donations. And Romney, of course, doesn’t enjoy the power of incumbency.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will visit Virginia next week for his first public events in the swing state this election cycle. The former Massachusetts governor will hold a fundraiser in Fairfax County Tuesday and a pair of campaign events Wednesday in Northern Virginia, according to sources familiar with his schedule who are not authorized to speak publicly about the trip.

The pundits say your staff put New Hampshire on your schedule because they wanted you to make your case on the economy before a swing-state audience. Have you checked the polls lately? Massachusetts is a swing state now. According to Public Policy Polling, just 44 percent of Bay State voters approve of the job you're doing as president. That's in a one-party, Democratic duchy where you got 62 percent of the vote just 15 months ago. There aren't any PPP numbers for New Hampshire, but around here liberals are like the temperatures. The farther north you go, the lower the...

Presidential candidate John McCain will visit Grand Junction on Election Day, his campaign announced today. Details have not been finalized, said McCain's Colorado spokesman, Tom Kise. McCain's visit follows that of his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who will be on Colorado Springs on Monday.

We Matter. You Don't! This was a historic campaign in so many ways. Too bad for you we had all the fun here in Ohio. By Connie Schultz November 2, 2008 Every four years, Ohio becomes the center of the political universe. Oh sure, there was a lot of chatter about Florida in 2000, but how many times did you hear people complain that Florida wouldn't have mattered if Al Gore hadn't pulled out of, you guessed it, Ohio? All this attention on my home state is flattering, but its fickle nature is a teeny bit insulting. We're a fascinating...

Get Ready for Some Football! Message from The National Republican Trust PAC From Scott Wheeler Dear Supporter: It's almost one minute to midnight. We are rolling out our final effort to defeat Barack Obama on national TV and major markets in swing states. The latest AP poll finds that 1 in 7 voters still hasn't decided how they will really vote — that's almost 15% of the electorate. Many voters simply don't decide until the last minute. Our ads can have a powerful effect. This weekend we want to buy ads on both the NFL Football game on Sunday and...

A formerly reliable Democratic state is now much less so - ON A hot summer day at Shady Oak Lake, teenagers line up for the high-diving board. Parents with small children wade in the shallows near the sandy beach. This suburban idyll, surrounded by leafy trees and big houses, lies near Edina, a town just west of Minnesota’s Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. Despite appearances, it is a political ground zero in a state the Republicans are fighting to snatch from the Democrats. Minnesota is famous as a liberal bastion. It is the only state not to have...