WSJ/NBC Poll: Romney: 47, Obama: 47

Daniel Doherty | October 21, 2012 11:00 AM

A new national poll released Sunday shows that the race for the White House is all tied up, 47% to 47%.

A late surge in support for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has put him in a dead heat with President Barack Obama with just over two weeks to go before the election, according to a new nationwide Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Sunday.
Among likely voters, the candidates are now tied, 47% to 47%, in a race that appears on track to be one of the closest in U.S. history.

Mr. Romney has pulled abreast of the president for the first time all year in the Journal poll, erasing a three-point lead among likely voters that Mr. Obama had in late September and a five-point lead earlier that month. Mr. Romney's surge followed his strong debate performance in Denver early this month and a contentious second debate with Mr. Obama last week.

With the contest deadlocked and just 5% of voters undecided, the campaigns will now turn heavily to state-by-state efforts to rouse their base and get out the vote.

As we've seen, the electorate is divided largely along gender lines:

The poll found Mr. Romney with a wide lead among men, 53% to 43%, while Mr. Obama continues to maintain an advantage among women, 51% to 43%. Mr. Romney's edge among men has grown over the past month, while Mr. Obama's lead among women has slightly diminished.
The poll of 816 likely voters was taken Oct. 17-20, after last week's presidential debate in New York. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.43 percentage points for likely voters.

Meanwhile, Team Romney has released another television advertisement -- this time comparing Barack Obama’s record as the President of the United States to Mitt Romney’s record as the governor of Massachusetts:

This spot will likely resonate with undecided voters who are tired of the gridlock and partisanship in Washington. Remember, during his tenure as the governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney balanced the budget four years in a row without raising taxes and reduced his state’s chronically high unemployment rate to 4.7 percent. So while President Obama will no doubt argue over the next sixteen days (as will his best surrogate) that he needs “more time” to fix the economic problems he “inherited” -- it’s interesting that Governor Romney never needed to make excuses for what he "inherited" in Massachusetts. Romney simply got it done.