* Obama backed by 46 pct of likely voters, Romney by 45 pct
* Obama’s lead narrows
* Barring a gaffe, debate not expected to affect the race
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) – The race between President
Barack Obama and rival Mitt Romney has tightened in the days
before their final televised debate, with the Republican closing
the gap on Obama’s slight but steady lead in a Reuters/Ipsos
online poll.
Data from the daily tracking poll released on Saturday
showed the Democratic incumbent with a small lead over the
former Massachusetts governor, but the margin has narrowed from
Friday and from results earlier in the week.
Forty-six percent of likely voters said they would vote for
Obama in the Nov. 6 election, while 45 percent said they would
back Romney.
On Friday, Obama was ahead by three percentage points at 46
percent compared to 43 percent for Romney.
“Our numbers have shown … Obama fairly steadily ahead by
three points over the last couple of days and today’s data does
show a tightening in those numbers,” Ipsos pollster Julia Clark
said.
“It’s very much neck and neck. I anticipate actually that
we’re going to see these numbers neck and neck all the way to
Election Day.”
Romney got a big boost from his strong performance in the
first debate on Oct. 3 with Obama, who was widely judged to have
given a passive, lackluster performance.
The president charged back with a sharper appearance in
their second debate on Oct. 16, comforting frustrated Democrats.
While opinion polls showed most viewers thought Obama won that
debate, Clark said he did not, in the end, get a noticeable
bounce in the polls as a result.
“I wouldn’t say that we saw a second-debate bounce for
either candidate,” she said, while predicting that the third and
final debate on Monday would not affect the race dramatically
unless one of the candidates made a significant gaffe.
The final debate focuses on foreign policy. Obama is
spending the weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David
in Maryland to prepare, and Romney is doing the same in Florida,
a battleground state where the debate will be held.
Though national polls give a sense of the mood of the
electorate, the winner of the White House race will be
determined by electoral votes from a handful of states such as
Ohio and Florida that swing, historically, between voting for
Republicans and Democrats in presidential elections.
A RealClearPolitics average of polls on Saturday showed
Obama ahead in Ohio by 2.5 percentage points and Romney ahead in
Florida by 2.1 percentage points.
The precision of Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured
using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll has a
credibility interval of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points for
likely voters.
(Editing By Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)
