no, that s right. for much of the summer we were talking about the historic likeability gap between the two candidates. president obama is always likeable figure and remains so despite voters don t necessarily like some of his policies or the direction the economy is going in. romney, his likeability, numbers were way down. he was trailing obama by 15, 20 points. that gap is now gone. they re basically tied. if you look at our average of the favorability ratings of both candidates, it disappeared, that first debate performance again for romney managed to undo hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising that obama put out there in early, in the summer. jon: tom beavin is the executive editor of real clear politics. it is going to be a fascinating a couple of weeks. tom, thank you. you bet. jenna: we re counting down to election day and counting down to the final presidential debate as well which focuses on foreign policy, both in it to win it as they say. a fair and balan
in 10 key gaat he will ground states, identified as competitive by politico . that is according to a politico george washington university poll. joining us executive editor of real clear politics , tom beavin. tom, according to your distillation of these polls, at this point in time it is advantage romney but just by a hair? well, certainly at the national level that s true. and that wall street journal poll that you mentioned was taken after the deck debate. so looking, sort of at the data set in total, it certainly president obama may have slowed romney s momentum, and stopped it briefly. doesn t look like he turned it around. things are looking moving in romney s direction. this is about the battle grand states. there are eight states we re looking at very, very closely. so the momentum is with romney? i think so, yeah. i think, you know, as i said there s no indication really, very little evidence that president obama has turned
jon: well, while the president only mentioned governor romney by name once, he repeatedly attacked republican plans for medicare, defense spending and taxes saying their policies would take america in the wrong direction. tom beavin, executive editor for real clear politics . let s talk with him now about all of this. the president said i ll tell you the truth. those jobs numbers that are out this morning throw a big wet blanket on a lot of what he had to say last night, don t they? they do, jon. that is one of the worries of the white house they have known this jobs number would coming out for a long time. let me interrupt and the president knew what the jobs number was before he gave the speech. that is what some people have said, yes. that he got the jobs number last night. so he knew that before going out. so they knew, if you had a good jobs number would have really reinforced his message and the argument that, yes we re better off or the country is moving in
mitt romney. the pick of paul ryan helped energize republicans that way, tom, i m sure you were up late last night. thanks for joining us. jenna: governor mitt romney visiting battleground states of iowa and new hampshire today. more with carl from the romney camp. we know the numbers are crucial for this election, jobs in general. so far what is the romney camp s reaction? reporter: it is critical and comes as all things do in the wake of both conventions and they re making the argument that the president last night made promises that today s job numbers simply can t support. mr. romney is enroute to iowa where he has campaign events and back to a rally in nashua on the board of massachusetts. he wrote, quote, if last night was the party, this morning is the hangover. after 43 straight months of
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