US Presidential Election Tightens in the Home Stretch

For most of the US presidential campaign, US President Obama has been comfortably coasting, well ahead of all rivals -- including Mitt Romney. But in recent weeks -- since the beginning of the series of 3 presidential debates -- Romney has begun to close in on the US President. Both in popular vote estimates and electoral college estimates, Romney has narrowed the gap significantly. Even the In-Trade odds gap has begun to narrow.

The last debate in the series of three took place last night in Boca Raton, Florida, and it is not likely that President Obama helped his case any. In fact, in the last debate, Romney looked more like the president, and Obama more like the challenger.

Obama started the 90 minutes here in Boca Raton, Florida believing he was losing his bid for re-election. Romney, by contrast, felt he could play things safe. He was a kinder, gentler presence than he was in the second debate in Hempstead, New York, when he fought back hard against a hyper Obama desperate to make up for his catastrophic performance in the first debate in Denver. By and large, Romney succeeded in Boca. He came across as knowledgeable and reasonable and made no mistakes. In short, he passed the commander-in-chief test. Having proved in the first debate he had the backbone, policy expertise and determination to try to tackle America's economic woes, tonight he showed that he was a plausibe commander-in-chief. It was not an especially high bar, but he cleared it. _Is Obama Losing the Election War to Romney?

Now we will watch and see if the early to mid-October trend in favour of Romney continues through the end of October, to the elections. If so, a large number of dictators and tyrants around the world will bemoan the loss of a golden opportunity, which the second Obama term represented.