of our nominees. so perry, some analysts say mitt romney needs to connect on some sort of a hail mary in the debates to turn things around. is that putting too much pressure on him? he does have a lot of pressure on him. right now the numbers are showing he s behind about three or four points nationally. the other thing, gallup research showed last week that essentially twice in the last 50 years has a candidate basically been losing before the debates but then after the debates been winning. it s very hard to change the dynamic completely. as we ve seen in 2008, the president may know debates are not his number one skill. he s pretty good at them. it s not clear he s going to make a bill gap to let romney win. thank you both. let s go more from iowa. early voting is happening now. good day to you, jamie. what can you tell us about the overall sentiment you re getting
well, you don t have to go far. i think if you look at reagan s performance in 1980, if i were advising mitt romney i would say watch that again and again. because what reagan managed to do was criticize an incumbent president quite harshly to his face but do it in a kindly way. there were 10% roughly of the voters who were undecided before that debate. they liked what they saw. they almost all shifted to reagan. that s why he won by that landslide. you know, interesting you bring that up. because reagan is traditionally seen as being a kind person. but how much do you think his success had to do with that element or the fact that he knew how to perform in public? he was comfortable doing it. ronald reagan knew the way he looked from every single direction so that when he made a gesture on camera he knew how that would come across on tv. for that carter was no match. okay. let s take a look at the chart we just brought up there from gallup. it shows how polls changed over the c
republicans in suburban philadelphia to try to get independents. if he hues to the conservative line, for example, in picking a vice president who s overly conservative, who s overly divisive, i think he makes a huge mistake. he s got to look at the polls, understand that he doesn t need the love. a vote that s tepid counts the same as a vote that s wildly enthusiastic. jonathan, let s talk about the president s schedule today. he s going to appear in albany with new york governor andrew cuomo. cuomo s the one who spearheaded new york s attempts for marriage equality. let s take a look, the gallup research showing support for marriage equality has grown over recent years. when you break it down by the party, the majority of democrats and independents support it. however, the president is reticent on coming out and saying that he has a fully