Charles Dharapak

This is the 47 percent the Romney camp would prefer you focus on. In a new poll conducted after the second presidential debate, President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney are locked in a dead-even sprint toward Election Day. The nominees are tied at 47 percent each among likely voters in the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Shannon Stapleton, Pool / AP Photo

Live in a battleground state? Turn off your TV. Free to spend everything they have in the weeks before the election, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are emptying their pockets into hotly contested states like North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida and snatching up ad time.

Iqbal Hussain / Xinhua-Corbis

The toughest foreign-policy issue our next president will face is Pakistan, the most dangerous country in the world. The battle for the soul of this critical nation is underway; we need to hear at Monday’s debate how President Obama and Governor Romney intend to get the right outcome.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP-pool

Well isn’t that ironic. Mitt Romney, known for his enormous personal wealth, is being surpassed in spending and cash intake by President Obama. The Romney campaign finished September with $63.1 million in its main fund to use before Election Day, while Obama is holding around $100 million.

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September was the best month yet for the Obama campaign's fundraising efforts, according to reports released Friday. Not only did the committee bring in $126 million over the course of the month, but the fact that less money was spent ($115.

Jewel Samad, AFP / Getty Images

Buoyed by a sharply improved second debate performance, President Obama’s basic rhetorical game plan for Monday’s finale remains the same: be energetic, passionate and delineate differences with Mitt Romney.The two sides were huddling Friday with officials of the presidential debate commission in Boca Raton, Fla.

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Mitt Romney may be the "Beehive state's favorite adopted son," but even proud parents have to be realistic about their kids. In a blow to Romney, the Salt Lake City Tribune announced their endorsement of President Obama in an editorial Friday, adding that "Romney, in whatever guise, does not deserve a first.

It must be noted that President Obama perhaps does not deserve the credit given to him for the coinage of the hilarious term “Romnesia,” a condition that causes frequent fact forgetting and drastic opinion changes. Obama’s reference to Romnesia at a Virginia rally Friday was not in fact the first iteration of this term.

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Mitt Romney a huge six-point lead over President Obama, according to Gallup's latest national tracking poll out Friday, a trend that first began after the first presidential debate. But there's a twist: According to Marist poll also out today, Obama's still leading in Ohio and Wisconsin—two key swing states that could provide the presidential with the firewall he needs to win the Electoral College.

Jewel Samad, AFP / Getty Images

Wonder how long it took Obama to come up with this one. The president made a funny Friday at a Virginia campaign event. He's concerned that his Republican opponent's inability to remember things like facts correctly might be the symptoms of a serious condition.

Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh went head to head with Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth over Medicare and abortion during a local half-hour news program Thursday night. In addition to promising to end Medicare "as we know it" if it remains unchanged, Walsh revealed just how anti-abortion he really is, claiming that exemptions to abortion laws in cases where a mother's life in danger are obsolete.

Mandel Ngan, AFP / Getty Images

When Mitt Romney said he ordered up “binders full of women” to diversify his cabinet, he was making a last-minute effort to reverse a political fact of life: if he continues to perform as badly with female voters as polls show he has been, he will lose the election.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Beyond the presidential debates, one final factor matters more than all the rest in a close race: ground game. It’s the ability to get your voters to the polls—a way of moving soft support into actual votes. Field operatives have been undervalued in recent years, as the focus of campaigns has shifted to big-money ad-bombs, compounded by the super-PAC economy.

Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images

As of mid-October, the Obama campaign has 755 offices nationwide for its get-out-the-vote effort—nearly three times as many as the Romney campaign. PLUS: John Avlon and Michael Keller break down what the office edge could mean on election day.

Olivier Douliery / Comedy Central

It was, for President Obama, a night of pre-arranged comedy, though whether he was laughing all the way to a second term is another question entirely.Prime-time cable television viewers saw him kill on C-SPAN Thursday night (a live standup routine, in white tie and tails, opposite rival comic Mitt Romney during the Al Smith Memorial Dinner at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria) and then, shortly after 11 p.