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Summary President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney returned to full-force campaigning.
President Barack Obama returned to full-force campaigning Thursday, ending a three-day pause to manage the federal response to the historic storm that battered the East Coast. He holds slim leads in many of the key U.S. battleground states five days before the Nov. 6 election.Polling, however, also shows Obama locked in a tie nationwide with Republican challenger Mitt Romney, who tempered his criticism of the president this week to avoid the appearance of seeking political advantage in the midst of a natural disaster.Both candidates faced a day of trying to strike the right tone in an intensely stressful race. Romney aimed at patriotism and the heartland in his first speech of the day, mentioning Boy Scouts, football, America the Beautiful and the flag.Romney also returned to criticism of Obama on economic issues, the most important in this election. The last of the closely watched monthly unemployment reports comes out Friday. Last months report said unemployment had dipped below the psychological barrier of 8 percent.At his first stop of the day in Wisconsin, Obama returned to the aftermath of the storm, saying he saw yet again that there are no Democrats or Republicans in a storm. There are just Americans.He implicitly reminded his audience of Romneys habit of making dramatic changes on issues.You know what I believe. You know where I stand. You know that Ill make tough political decisions even when they are not popular, Obama said. After all weve been through together, we cant give up now.Obama also got a boost Thursday from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a political independent, who announced he was endorsing the president.Bloomberg said Obama would bring leadership that is critically needed to fight climate change after the East Coast devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy.Obama spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said the president remains focused on the storm recovery, but must resume campaigning because of the reality of Tuesdays election and the need to continue making the case for Americans to give him four more years in the White House.Obamas lead in a majority of the nine so-called battleground states could determine the outcome. Those states are neither reliably Republican nor Democratic, giving them outsized importance in the U.S. system for choosing the president. The winner is not the candidate with the most popular votes nationwide but the one who manages to accumulate at least 270 electoral votes in state-by-state contests. Those votes are determined by a combination of a states population and representation in Congress.Despite a Romney surge nationwide after the three presidential debates, polling shows Obama holding on to leads in enough of the all-important swing states most notably Ohio to win at least the necessary 270 electors. No Republican candidate for the White House has ever won the election without capturing Ohio.Both candidates are battling to win over the thin slice of the electorate that remains undecided while ensuring that their supporters go to the polls. Superstorm Sandy was bound to hurt turnout in hard-hit New Jersey and New York, but both are heavily Democratic, and it was unlikely to have a significant effect on results. Election officials were promising every effort to have polls open or direct voters to alternative locations where necessary.
