holds a clear edge against rom in a match-up, 51 to 45%. mitt romney has erased his lead among independents. the president with a slight edge lead where romney held a 12-point lead weeks ago. the country remains deeply divided over whether the give the president a second term. this president knows he must get ahead of his game. that's why he keeps making the case, as he did, to nbc's matt lauer on sunday. >> i deserve a second term, but we're not done. when you and i sat down, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. we found out just a few days before we sat down that we lost that month, 750,000 jobs. now we're creating 250,000. we created 3.7 million jobs over the last 23 months. we created the most jobs since 2005, the most manufacturing jobs since 1990, but we're not