Romney is running out of time despite taking spoils in live debate

Friday 5 October 2012

AFTER several difficult weeks, Republican Mitt Romney found his footing in a strong debate performance against Democratic President Barack Obama.

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WASHINGTON

The question is whether it is too late to make a difference.

Mr Romney could see a burst of fundraising, new interest from undecided voters and a wave of support from his fellow Republicans after he appeared to have emerged as a clear victor in his first face-to-face confrontation with Mr Obama and will likely benefit from favour- able news coverage as well.

Still, with the November 6 election little more than a month away, Mr Romney is running out of time to seize the lead.Voting has begun in some form or another in 35 states, and 6% of those have already cast their ballots, according to a Reuters/IPSOS poll released on Wednesday.And, while debates are among the most memorable events of any presidential campaign, there is little evidence they can change the outcome of an election.Mr Obama may have underwhelmed but he avoided the sort of disastrous performance that can cause backers to reassess their support."Nobody is going to switch sides on the basis of this debate," said Samuel Popkin, a political science pro- fessor at the University of California in San Diego.Standing on the same stage as the President for the first time, Mr Romney took full advantage of the opportunity to convince voters he is up to the task of leading the nation. Speaking in crisp, bullet-pointed paragraphs, Mr Romney came armed with a quiver of "zingers" built for a long afterlife on cable TV and YouTube."You're entitled to your own house and your own airplane, but not your own facts," he told Mr Obama at one point."Romney won. The real surprise is he won so clearly," said Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University.Voters seemed to agree. Some 67% of those surveyed by CNN in a "flash poll" after the debate declared Mr Rom-ney the winner. Mr Obama's re-election prospects on Intrade, an online prediction market, fell 8% to 66%.The President maintains an advantage in opinion polls. On Wednesday, he led Mr Romney by 47% to 41% in the daily Reuters/IPSOS tracking poll, a margin that has held fairly steady since the middle of September.Other polls have shown the race to be a little closer. Mr Obama holds clear leads in most of the politically divided states that are likely to decide the election.Many pollsters expect the President's margin to shrink somewhat over the coming month, but debates rarely have much of an impact.Opinion polls have shifted by an average of less than 1% in the wake of the 16 presidential debates that have taken place since 1988, according to research by Tom Holbrook, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

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Romney is running out of time despite taking spoils in live debate

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