On the heels of the first of three presidential debates, national polls continue to fan the flames on who will be the likely choice.
The most recent national poll shows that President Barack Obama takes the lead over Republican candidate Mitt Romney 49 percent to 45 percent. The Quinnipiac University survey also found that President Obama leads in the approval of women voters 56 to 38 percent as well as black voters 94 to 2 percent. However, Romney does have an impression among men leading 52 to 42 percent as well as whites 53 to 42 percent.
Although the polls show a clear difference in choice among race and gender, the gap is much narrower among Independents. The small but strong political group is split down the middle with 47 percent backing Romney and 45 supporting the president.
Ultimately, the national polls alone won’t determine if Mitt Romney can gain momentum in battleground states. He has spent a large amount of his campaign in battleground states like Colorado hoping to draw support by giving citizens in cities like Denver a very important assignment.
"I'd like you to go out and find one person who voted for Barack Obama — or maybe two or three or four or five — and convince them to come join our team," Romney said to the crowd. "I need you to go out and find people and say 'You know what? It's not working.' It's time to get America going again."
Just four years ago, Obama took the state of Colorado over opponent Sen. John McCain by a nine-point margin.
The debates will be a challenging feat for Romney as noted by New York Times reporter John Harwood.
"History shows that candidates have different ways to score through presidential debates: the forceful put-down, the surprising show of skill, the opponent's fumble, superior post-debate tactics. But it also shows that to fundamentally alter the direction of a campaign, a candidate usually has to accomplish all of those things," Harwood wrote.
Outside of the Nixon-Kennedy 1960 debates, the 2000 Gore-Bush debate is the only one that showed a drastic shift from one candidate to another.
"Across the entire 2000 debate period, the race shifted from an 8-point lead for Gore to a 4-point lead for Bush," according to Gallup Poll analyst Lydia Saad.
Gallup research condcuted during the 2008 election supports this view stating that "presidential debates are rarely game changers" and noting only a "few instances in which the debates may have had a substantive impact on election outcomes."
Despite research, Romney remains optimistic about all three debates.
“It'll be conversation with the American people that will span almost an entire month," Romney said in Denver last night. "We'll describe our respective views, and I believe the people of Colorado will choose a better way forward for our country."
The first debate will take place tomorrow night at the University of Denver.
