President Obama has a slim lead over Mitt Romney nationally, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released late Monday.
Obama takes 49 percent support over Romney’s 48 percent. Obama led the same poll from last month 49 to 46 percent over Romney.
{mosads}There’s been a deluge of national polling in recent days, and although there are a couple of outliers, most show the candidates to be neck and neck in the race for the White House.
Less than 1 percentage point separates Obama and Romney in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls.
On Monday night, Obama and Romney will meet for a foreign policy debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.
According to the Post/ABC poll, Obama has a slim 49 to 46 percent lead over Romney on international affairs, a 47 to 46 percent lead on terrorism and a 48 to 45 percent lead on who is better equipped to manage the armed forces.
Obama has also seemed to regain his momentum among female voters, opening up his widest gender gap lead of the cycle, with a 14-point advantage over Romney among women.
The Obama campaign has tried to bring women’s issues back to the forefront in recent weeks, claiming Romney is trying to cloud his views on issues such as abortion and equal pay.
Still, Romney nearly negates that advantage by virtue of a 12-point lead among men.
In addition, Romney seems to have wiped out the low favorability rating that dogged him throughout the Republican primaries and the early part of the national campaign.
Fifty percent said they viewed the GOP challenger favorably, against 47 percent who said they have a negative view of him. That’s Romney’s best favorability rating of the cycle, and he now nearly matches Obama, who is at 52 percent positive and 46 negative.
Romney has been unable to separate himself from Obama on economic issues, which many believed would be an albatross for the president.
Obama is favored on taxes 53 to 42 percent, and trails Romney only narrowly on the issue of deficit reduction, 49 to 45 percent, and on the economy, 48 to 46 percent.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll of 1,376 likely voters was conducted between Oct. 18 and Oct. 21 and has a 3 percent margin of error.