President Obama Leads In Most Polls

(Cartoon above is by Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

A whole rash of new polls have been released, and almost all of them verify that President Obama has jumped into the lead now in the presidential race. Here are the numbers in those polls:

United Press International Poll (September 8-14)
Obama...............49%
Romney...............45%

Reuters/Ipsos Poll (September 12-17)
Obama...............48%
Romney...............43%

Gallup Poll (September 11-17)
Obama...............47%
Romney...............46%

SurveyUSA/Braun Poll (September 13-16)
Obama...............48%
Romney...............45%

DailyKos/SEIU/PPP Poll (September 13-16)
Obama...............50%
Romney...............46%

Rasmussen Poll (September 15-17)
Obama...............45%
Romney...............47%

NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll (September 12-16)
Obama...............50%
Romney...............45%

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll also showed Obama and Romney tied on who can better handle the economy (43% to 43%). This is bad news for Romney, since this is the only area he has been outpolling the president. It looks like he has lost the only edge that he had. Another bit of bad news for Romney is that the same poll now shows 50% of the public is satisfied with the job Obama is doing as president.

Note that there is one outlier poll (a poll that disagrees will all the others). It is the Rasmussen Poll, which has Romney ahead (but within the margin of error). Rasmussen is known as a Republican-leaning poll, and when it shows Obama in the lead you'll know it's time to bury Romney.

When all these polls are averaged together, we get the following numbers:
Obama...............48.14%
Romney...............45.29%

It's still slightly more than six weeks until election day though, and we still haven't even had any of the three scheduled debates. Things could change. But right now, it looks like Romney has some ground to make up.