• Pulpit politics: Pastors endorse candidates, thumbing noses at the IRS

    John Adkisson / Reuters file

    The Rev. Mark Harris endorsed a Republican candidate for the state Supreme Court during his sermon Oct. 7 at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C.

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    With the presidential election a dead heat and many other races too close to call, hundreds of religious leaders nationwide are urging their congregations to vote for a specific candidate. They break the law when they do so — that's the point — but it's unclear whether there's any real penalty for pastors who make such endorsements from the pulpit.

    M. Alex Johnson M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for NBC News. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

    About 1,600 pastors across the country violated a 58-year-old ban on political endorsements by churches in October by explicitly backing political candidates in their Sunday sermons, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom of Scottsdale, Ariz., a conservative Christian legal organization behind a campaign called Pulpit Freedom Sunday.

    The 1954 law they are challenging prohibits charitable groups, including most churches, from making candidate endorsements, but doesn't bar ministers, priests, rabbis and imams from speaking out on other ballot issues, like voter initiatives, or organizing get-out-the-vote drives and education efforts around elections themselves. 

    The alliance is seeking to force a court showdown over the constitutionality of the law, violation of which can cost churches their tax-exempt status. Since Oct. 7, the original Pulpit Freedom Day, many pastors who participated in the protest have posted their remarks online or sent them to the Internal Revenue Service, essentially daring the agency charged with enforcing the prohibition to put up or shut up.

    So far, the IRS has done the latter.

    The Alliance Defending Freedom asserts that it's working to further the rights of all religious groups, but it's an explicitly Christian organization, with a heavy representation of evangelical members and leaders. One clue to its philosophy is that it made it Pulpit Freedom "Sunday" — choosing the Christian Sabbath, instead of more broadly embracing the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) and the Muslim day of worship (Friday).

    So it's no surprise that an unscientific survey of the posted endorsements indicates that they skewed overwhelmingly in favor of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, as in these representative samples:

    In a guest sermon at Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, Calif., Wayne Gruden, a professor and theologian at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, recommended that "all citizens" vote for Romney "and Republicans in general" (the endorsement begins at 59:58):

    Wayne Gruden, a professor and theologian at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, endorses Mitt Romney.

    Pastor Ken Redmond of Abundant Life Worship Center in Midland, Texas, told his congregation they shouldn't vote for President Barack Obama, saying, "Here is your choice: a Mormon or a Muslim" (the remarks begin at 33:17):

    And Bishop Samuel A.L Pope Sr. told his congregation at Solid Rock Missionary Baptist Church in California City, Calif., not to vote for Obama (the statement begins at 26:54):

    Bishop Samuel A.L Pope Sr. endorses Mitt Romney at Solid Rock Missionary Baptist Church in California City, Calif.

    As of Friday, none of the hundreds of pastors who took part in the protest reported hearing back from the government. In fact, the Alliance Defending Freedom says, only one of the churches that have taken part in Pulpit Freedom Sundays over the last five years has been the target of IRS action, and that case was dropped shortly after the IRS lost a separate legal ruling almost four years ago.


    The Internal Revenue Code specifies that all section 501(c)(3) organizations are "absolutely prohibited" from taking part in, contributing to or making any statement "in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office."

    But enforcement appears to have halted completely in early 2009 after Living Word Christian Center of Brooklyn Park, Minn., successfully appealed an audit that the IRS launched after its pastor endorsed Republican Rep. Michelle Bachmann for re-election. The judge ruled (.pdf) that the IRS was technically violating its own regulations in deciding whether to audit churches for banned political activities — because the official making that decision wasn't high enough on the Treasury Department's organization chart.

    The IRS, however, isn't acknowledging that it has stopped enforcing the ban on candidate endorsements by officials of 501(c)3 charitable organizations.

    In response to queries from NBC News, the IRS disavowed comments by a regional official of its division overseeing tax-exempt organizations, who said last month that the agency was "holding any potential church audits in abeyance" while it revises its regulations in light of the 2009 ruling.

    Dean Patterson, a spokesman for the IRS, said the official "misspoke," adding: "The IRS continues to run a balanced program that follows up on potential non-compliance, while ensuring the appropriate oversight and review to determine that compliance activities are necessary and appropriate."

    Noting that it's barred by law from discussing individual tax cases, the IRS declined NBC News' request for documentation showing that it has taken any action against politicking from the pulpit since then.

    Full coverage of Decision 2012 on NBC Politics

    But Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said it's clear that the agency is sidestepping the issue.

    "We surmise the IRS has shut down all its church audits," Stanley said. As time goes on, he added, "It may become clear that the IRS has taken the position that it will not censor a pastor."

    (As it happens, there is a legal way for churches to endorse candidates and still not pay taxes, by registering with the IRS under a different section of the tax code, 501(c)4. But nearly all religious institutions reject that choice because individuals who give money to 501(c)4 groups aren't allowed to claim tax deductions for their donations. Donations to 501(c)3 groups are deductible.)

    A matter of politics, not constitutionality
    While the issue is often cast in terms of separation of church and state, the prohibition on candidate endorsements is a political one, not a constitutional one. If anything, "from a constitutional perspective ... American churches have had every right to endorse or oppose political candidates" since 1819, James Davidson, a prominent religion scholar, wrote in a landmark 1998 paper (.pdf) in the Review of Religious Research.

    That was when the Supreme Court ruled — in a case involving banks, not churches — that the federal government had the power to limit taxation of specific enterprises in furtherance of the public good, quoting Daniel Webster's argument that "the power to tax is the power to destroy." Subsequent law extended that philosophy to establish that charitable groups could seek exemption from taxation.

    The prohibition on candidate endorsements comes from a different source. It dates only to 1954, and like the 1819 decision, it applies to all 501(c)3 charitable groups, not just churches. Democratic Sen. Lyndon Johnson of Texas inserted it into the tax code as he was fighting off a re-election challenge backed by tax-exempt political foundations that historians have linked with the anti-Communist witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

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    The measure passed with little debate. Its effect was to muzzle religious leaders, even though "there is no evidence that a religious element played a significant part in Johnson's decision," Patrick L. O'Daniel, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas Law School, wrote in a 2001 reconstruction of the bill's passage in the Boston College Law Review.

    Whether Johnson intended it that way or not, religious leaders have argued that the provision is an unacceptable stifling of their constitutional rights.

    "This is about restoring biblical authority and a constitutional right for pastors to speak freely from the pulpit without any fear of the government on cultural and societal issues from a biblical perspective. And that includes commenting on the positions of the candidates," the Rev. Dann E. Travis, pastor of Crossroads of Life Church in Binghampton, N.Y., said to cheers from the congregation last week.

    The Rev. Rob Rotola, who took part in Pulpit Freedom Sunday at Word of Life Ministries in Wichita, Kan., told NBC station KSN: "The concept of separation of church and state meant that the state was to keep out of the affairs of the church, not that the church was supposed to be silent about things about the state."

    Pulpit Freedom Sunday

    Ministries taking part in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, Oct. 7

    - Baptist/Southern Baptist 409
    - Assemblies of God 36
    - Nazarene 34
    - Church of God 32
    - Presbyterian 17
    - Lutheran 12
    - Church of Christ 11
    - Catholic 10
    - Allliance Church 7
    - Anglican 4
    - Messianic Jewish 3
    - Nondenominational/ unaffiliated/other 993

    Sources: Alliance Defending Freedom, NBC News research

    But other religious figures see a political angle — specifically, a conservative and evangelical angle — behind the challenge to the law.

    The Rev. Barry Lynn, a minister in President Barack Obama's United Church of Christ and executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Alliance Defending Freedom was hiding behind "a fiction that there's a war against Christianity." The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he said, managed to preach about politics almost every day of his adult life without ever endorsing a political candidate.

    "It's time to get serious about this, because we could end up with a corruption not only of the political process but of the integrity of the genuine prophetic message of churches," Lynn said in a recent interview on State of Belief Radio.

    The Rev. Fester Coffee-Prose, youth minister at First Christian Church in Tyler, Texas, also objected, saying politics should be left to politicians, not pastors.

    "While we might take stands on certain issues, when it comes to the candidates, the church should be a place where people of diverse backgrounds and diverse beliefs gather," he told NBC station KETK. "I don't necessarily believe that we should be endorsing any one candidate from the pulpit."

    Also of concern to some religious leaders is the alliance leadership's connections to conservative organizations and causes: Its president, Alan Sears, was director of Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography during the Reagan administration, and other board members represent the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, the anti-abortion activist group Susan B. Anthony List and the conservative evangelical ministry Focus on the Family.

    What pastors say

    In a survey of 1,000 Protestant ministers, LifeWay Research, the polling arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, found that:

    - 87 percent believe pastors shouldn't endorse candidates from the pulpit
    - 44 percent have endorsed candidates, but only outside their church roles
    - 78 percent disagreed that this election has been "too religious"

    Source: LifeWay Research, May 2012. Margin of error: plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

    Pulpit Freedom Sunday itself was similarly overwhelmingly Christian, with an emphasis on evangelicalism. Working from a list of ministries that signed up in advance, NBC News tabulated that 98 percent were evangelical or otherwise Protestant ministries.

    Just 10 Catholic priests took part, defying the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' directive that church leaders "are to avoid endorsing or opposing candidates or telling people how to vote."

    Only four Anglican ministers signed up. No imams or traditional rabbis were listed — the three synagogues on the roster are Messianic Jewish congregations, which proclaim the divinity of Jesus.

    In a statement, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it had reminded imams and khateebs (those who give the sermon during Friday prayers) that tax-exempt mosques "cannot explicitly or implicitly endorse candidates." Likewise, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs pointed to its standing directive that "organizations may not rate, endorse or oppose candidates for public office."

    The alliance, nonetheless, says its campaign is about a larger question.

    "Eventually, we'll have a test case about the constitutionality of the Johnson Amendment," Stanley said. "The IRS has really left pastors and churches no option if they believe they have the right to speak freely from their pulpit."

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  • Final national NBC/WSJ poll before Tuesday: Obama 48 percent, Romney 47 percent

    Jason Reed / Reuters

    President Barack Obama campaigns at McArthur High School in Hollywood, Fla. on Nov. 4, 2012.

    By Mark Murray, NBC News Senior Political Editor

    With just two days until Election Day, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney are running neck and neck nationally, according to the final national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll before the election.

    Obama gets support from 48 percent of likely voters, while Romney gets 47 percent.

    Read the full poll here (.pdf)

    A new NBC poll should give both presidential campaigns reason to hope. Obama comes in at 48 percent; Romney at 47 percent. Taking Sandy into account, 80 percent in the Northeast said they approved of the president's handling of Superstorm Sandy. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

    In the NBC/WSJ poll released two weeks ago, the two candidates were deadlocked at 47 percent each.

    “This poll is reflecting a very, very close campaign nationally,” says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart.

    “It’s a dead heat,” Hart adds. “This election is going to be decided by turnout, turnout, turnout.”

    While both Obama and Romney are running virtually even in this national poll, a majority of surveys from the battleground states – especially in the crucial battlegrounds of Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin – show the president with a slight advantage.

    A new NBC poll indicates the presidential race is in a dead heat. Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may have given Obama a boost when he praised his leadership. NBC's Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory have more.

    Good news for Obama: Two-thirds approve of hurricane handling
    The NBC/WSJ poll – conducted Nov. 1-3 – contains good news for both Obama and Romney in the final days of the campaign.

    For Obama, 41 percent of likely voters say that what they have read, heard, and seen over the past couple of weeks have given them a  more favorable impression of president, compared to 40 percent who said it had given them a less favorable impression – which is up from his 38-to-43 percent score on this question two weeks ago.

    Read our memo on our 'likely voter' methodology (.pdf)

    Both presidential candidates have spent months fighting over nine battleground states, but as the race draws to a close the Romney campaign is trying to expand the battlefield to states that have been reliably blue in recent years. Is this opportunity or desperation? DNC Executive Director Patrick Gaspard discusses.

    Part of that more favorable impression is due to his handling of Hurricane Sandy, of which 67 percent of likely voters approve.

    By comparison, 45 percent of voters say they have say they have a less favorable impression of Romney from what they have read, heard and seen over the past couple of weeks, versus 40 percent who have a more favorable view.

    Yet two weeks ago – fresh off his debate performances – Romney’s score here was tied, 44 percent more favorable, and 44 percent less favorable.

    In the latest NBC News/ WSJ poll President Barack Obama has an eight point lead among women, however Mitt Romney has an seven point lead among men. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., joins NBC's Andrea Mitchell to talk about the gender gap.

    Comparing 2012 to 2004
    In addition, Obama’s numbers in this poll look almost identical to George W. Bush’s in the final NBC/WSJ before the 2004 presidential election, which Bush ended up winning 51 percent to 48 percent.

    Obama’s approval rating among likely voters stands at 49 percent – exactly matching Bush’s 49 percent approval in the final 2004 NBC/WSJ poll.

    Forty-two percent say the country is headed in the right direction, versus 41 percent who said the same thing in late Oct. 2004.

    And the head-to-head score between Obama and Romney – 48 percent to 47 percent – is identical to what it was in the final NBC/WSJ poll before the 2004 election: Bush 48 percent, Democrat John Kerry 47 percent.

    “The comparisons between 2004 and 2012 are haunting,” McInturff says.

    Good news for Romney: Comfort level, the economy
    The good news for Romney in this national poll is that 53 percent of likely voters are comfortable with the idea of him as president, which ties Obama’s percentage on this question (although 39 percent are “very comfortable” with Obama versus 26 percent who are “very comfortable” with Romney).

    Also, Romney is ahead of Obama among independents, 47 percent to 40 percent.

    And the former Massachusetts governor leads Obama by five points on which candidate is better prepared to create jobs and grow the economy, 47 percent to 42 percent.

    However, a majority of voters in the survey – 52 percent – say the economy is recovering.

    The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Nov. 1-3 of 1,475 likely voters (including 443 cell phone-only respondents), and it has a margin of error of plus-minus 2.55 percentage points.

  • In mad dash, candidates seek every vote

    Carolyn Kaster / AP

    President Obama spoke Sunday morning at a campaign event in Concord, N.H.

    By Tom Curry, NBC News national affairs writer

    Updated 1:30 a.m. ET With the hours quickly running out before voters render their verdict, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigned Sunday night in Pennsylvania, an eleventh-hour foray into a state that no GOP nominee has won since 1988.

    Speaking to a chilled crowd in in Bucks County, a county which President Barack Obama carried in 2008 with 54 percent of the vote, Romney said, “We’re only two days away from a fresh start. Two days away from the first day of a new beginning.”

    As he has for several stops in the last two days, Romney alluded at his Bucks County event to Obama’s comment on Friday that “voting’s the best revenge,” by saying, “In his closing argument, this is last week, President Obama asked his supporters to vote for revenge. For revenge. Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country."

    A new NBC poll should give both presidential campaigns reason to hope. Obama comes in at 48 percent; Romney at 47 percent. Taking Sandy into account, 80 percent in the Northeast said they approved of the president's handling of Superstorm Sandy. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

    He added, “He’s hoping we’ll settle. Americans don’t settle. We build, we aspire, we dream, we listen to that voice which says ‘we can do better’!”

    Romney suggested to the crowd that they “reach across the street to that neighbor with the other guy’s yard sign. And we’ll reach across the aisle in Washington to people of good faith in the other party.”

    In a sign of hope for Romney, Obama’s once-wide lead in the state appears to be slipping.

    A new Allentown Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll Sunday showed Obama only 3 percentage points ahead of Romney, 49 percent to 46 percent. Another recent Pennsylvania survey, the Franklin & Marshall College poll, had Romney trailing Obama by only 4 percentage points among likely voters.

    A Romney victory in the Keystone state, which has 20 electoral votes, would be one of the campaign’s biggest surprises.

    Asked by a reporter Sunday whether it was a little too late for Romney to invest time campaigning in Pennsylvania, Romney senior advisor Kevin Madden said, "No, because this is one of those states that came into view right after the first debate. And as a result it just presented a great opportunity…. And here you are with an incumbent president under 50 (percent in polling). We're essentially tied. We're over-performing in many of these critical areas of the state, like the Philadelphia suburbs, areas like Scranton, southwest Pennsylvania. So we see it as a great opportunity and traveling there today we think can help make a difference. And this is actually the perfect time given that you're 48 hours from people making a decision, given that that they don't have early voting there.”

    In addition to his Pennsylvania stop, Romney campaigned in Virginia, Florida, Des Moines, Iowa and Cleveland, Ohio.

    Mitt Romney, striking a hopeful tone in the final days of the 2012 race, returned to Iowa, the state that launched his campaign.

    After campaigning with former president Bill Clinton in New Hampshire Sunday morning, Obama touched down in Florida Sunday afternoon, then headed to Ohio for an evening rally, then to Colorado for a late appearance.

    Romney reached out Sunday for the votes of independents who may be disenchanted with Obama, telling a crowd in Cleveland, “He promised to do so very much, but frankly he fell so very short.  He promised to be a post-partisan president, but he’s been most partisan, he’s been divisive, blaming, attacking, dividing.  And by the way, it’s not only Republicans that he refused to listen too, he also refused to listen to independent voices.”

    Later in his speech Romney added another pitch to independents in Ohio: “Now so many of you look at the big debates in this country, and you don’t look at them as a Republican or as a Democrat, but first as an American….  You hoped that President Obama would live up to his promise to bring people together to solve big problems, but he hasn’t.  And I will.” 

    Two hours earlier, only eight miles away from the Romney event, Vice President Joe Biden campaigned in Lakewood, Ohio, accusing Romney and his running mate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin of playing "a con game" in the waning days of the campaign. "They're running away from what they believe." 

    He appealed to Democrats to get out the vote in the state that decided the 2004 election and whose 18 electoral votes might well decide the election: “We need you Ohio. We need you. We win Ohio, we win this election.”

    President Obama is calling on his supporters and surrogates in the final two days before Election Day. His focus remains on Ohio, which offers 18 electoral votes. NBC's Kristen Welker reports.

    In a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll released Saturday, Romney was trailing Obama in Ohio 51 percent to 45 percent among likely voters, including those who were undecided yet leaning toward a candidate and those who voted early. The survey found that 3 percent were undecided.

    Ryan was also campaigning Sunday in Ohio with a stop in Mansfield. As his first event Sunday Ryan, dressed in a Green Bay Packers jacket, arrived at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisc., to attend a tailgate party. Green Bay has ranked among the nation’s top presidential campaign TV ad media markets in recent weeks.

    Meanwhile Obama opened his day by rallying Democrats in the small but vital battleground of New Hampshire which has only four electoral votes of the 270 needed to win the presidency. George W. Bush carried the state in 2000 but Democrat John Kerry won it in 2004 and Obama won it in 2008.

    “Just as we did when Bill Clinton was president, we gotta ask the wealthiest to pay a little bit more so we can reduce the deficit and still invest in the things we need to grow,” Obama told a crowd in Concord, N.H.

    The president told the crowd that on Saturday night he had consulted with his campaign advisers.

    “I looked at David Plouffe, some of you know he’s my big campaign poo-bah smart guy. But Plouffe and I looked at each other and we said, ‘You know what. We’re no longer relevant. We’re props. Because what’s happened is that now the campaign falls on these 25-year old kids who are out there knocking on doors, making phone calls, and then we realized, you know, pretty soon after they do their jobs then they’re not relevant either because it’s now up to you.”

    Romney will hold his final rally of the campaign Monday night in Manchester, N.H., underscoring again the significance of its four electoral votes.

    In his first event Sunday in Des Moines, Iowa, Romney reminded his supporters how vital Iowa is to his campaign strategy: “I need Iowa – I need Iowa so we can win the White House and take back America, keep it strong, make sure we always remain the hope of the earth. I’m counting on you. Will you get the job done?”

    A Des Moines Register Iowa poll released Sunday showed Romney trailing Obama 47 percent to 42 percent.

    NBC News’s Carrie Dann, Garrett Haake and Ali Weinberg contributed to this story 

  • Nonvoters: They're too busy, fed up or say their vote doesn't count

    Courtesy photos

    For different reasons, Suzann Holland, of Monroe, Wis., Heather Felton, of Parrish, Fla., and Ryan King, of Buffalo, N.Y. will not be voting in the Nov. 6 elections.

    By Isolde Raftery, NBC News

    Tabitha Brown, 29, of Oregon, says she won't vote because she finds her ballot too confusing. “I’m just a simple girl," she said. "Dumb it down for us.”


    In Buffalo, N.Y., Ryan King, 19, said he won't vote because he doesn't know if he's registered. He mailed in a registration form, but no one replied, so he doesn't know where to show up. Further south in the Bronx, Lala, a woman who is staying at a shelter, isn't voting because she thought she needed a state ID, which she can’t afford. When she learned she didn’t need an ID, it was too late to register.

    Political pundits say undecided voters will determine the election, but little is said about people like Brown, King and Lala, who aren’t voting. Since the 1960s, voter turnout has steadily declined in the U.S., which already ranks near the bottom among established democracies. In 2008, 64 percent of voting-age citizens voted, compared with 93 percent in Chile, 86 percent in Germany and 74 percent in Canada.

    In this election, the fear is that some nonvoters may have wanted to vote. In Florida, voters cried out in frustration as polling stations became overwhelmed, and the Democratic Party had sued to extend early voting after some people were stuck on lines for hours trying to meet Saturday's deadline. NBC's Michael Isikoff reports.

    NBC News recently asked readers via Twitter, Facebook and through NBCNews.com to tell us why they won't cast their ballots. Their responses paralleled those from a 2008 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau: They don’t like their choices, they’re busy or they’re not interested.  

    Broken down, the least likely voters have the lowest level of education. In fact, the most pronounced voting gap in 2008 was not between young and senior (49 to 72 percent) but between those without a high school degree and those with advanced degrees – 39 percent to 83 percent.

    The wealthier are more likely voters -- 52 percent of those whose annual family income is less than $20,000 voted versus 80 percent among those whose families bring in more than $100,000. That could be partly because low-income people have more trouble taking time off work to vote.

    “Everyone’s pressed for time these days and therefore whether or not an employer is actively allowing people to vote the employees may feel time-pressed or constrained to take that legally protected time,” said Susan Schoenfeld, senior legal editor for Business & Legal Resources, which provides guidance to employers on human resources issues.

    Although some states require that employers give workers time off to vote, human resource experts say those laws are sometimes too confusing for employers and employees to understand.

    About 13 percent of those responding to the Census survey said they didn’t vote because they didn’t like the 2008 candidates. That theme emerged among our readers too – many of them women in their 30s and 40s – who said not voting was itself political. Leaving their forms blank was, in a sense, a vote of no confidence.

    “It feels like a third choice,” said Suzann Holland, a 41-year-old public library director from Monroe, Wis. “We tend to think we have two choices because third parties are not viable, but there is a third choice – to let other people decide because sometimes either choice goes against everything we believe in.”

    Holland has voted in the past but this year, she said the debates between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney “cemented my distaste for both candidates.”

    Breeanne Findley, 32, of Moline, Ill., is also fed up with Obama and Romney. She and her husband have five children between the two of them; she is a stay-at-home mom and is devoutly Pentecostal. 

    “I kept going back and forth, I looked online at who else was running for president – the Green Party and some other independent groups – but I didn’t like those guys either,” Findley said.

    Her sister-in-law was appalled, she said. “She says that I’m not allowing my voice to be heard, saying that I should reconsider because my vote matters, there these are things I need to be voting for.”

    She has decided it doesn’t matter who becomes president: “I’m a Christian and I believe that God is in charge. If this guy wins, it’s not the end of the world because God is still God.”

    In Parrish, Fla., Heather Felton, 37, said she found herself lost in the political middle. She is Catholic, opposed to abortion, but also opposed to the death penalty and in favor of gun control. She has nuanced views about immigration.

    “I posted to my Facebook page, ‘Who should I vote for? Give me a good moral reason,'” she said. “But people aren’t giving me a good moral reason. They’re presenting negative inflammatory language.”

    NBC's Tom Brokaw speaks with young voters grappling with a distrust of the political system.

    Back in New York, King, a student at Cansius College, is not alone in struggling with registering to vote. Six percent of nonvoters between the ages of 18 and 24 didn’t vote in 2008 because they didn’t know how or where to sign up, according to the Census data.

    After mailing in a voter registration form, he looked online for clues about where he should vote. He asked the College Democrats and the College Republicans at his school, but they told him they didn’t know.

    Increasingly jaded, King now questions whether his vote would count. (Which lands him in another Census category: Four percent of nonvoters said they didn’t register because they didn’t believe their vote would make a difference.)

    “I just feel so disenfranchised voting in New York,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. If I voted for Obama, it wouldn’t count, so why bother?”

    He added: “If you want me to vote so bad, at least meet me halfway.”

    In the Bronx, Lala was slightly sheepish to find out she didn’t need an ID to vote. (She used to live in Georgia, where ID is required.) But mostly, she said, she feels increasingly apathetic. More pressing was food for dinner and ultimately, a job. She checked her wallet – she had $30 to her name.

    She said she read Romney’s five-point plan but found it lacking and disjointed.

    “As much as I would love to be bitter about living in poverty during the Obama administration, I have to consider that the alternative is a man without a plan,” Lala said. Then she grew contemplative.

    “All I need is something as simple as a job,” she said. “I could have my quality of life back. I don’t know how voting is going to meet my immediate needs.”

    NBC's Allison Linn contributed reporting to this story.

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  • Obama, Romney teams project confidence amid tight poll numbers

    By Michael O'Brien, NBC News

     

    Surrogates for President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney projected outward confidence on Sunday in each candidate's ability to win on Election Day.

    As the final NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll showed a close race nationally between the two candidates, their top supporters squabbled over who held the upper hand in critical battleground states.

    "I'm very confident that, two days out from Election Day, the president's going to be re-elected on Tuesday night," said David Plouffe, a White House adviser who managed the president's 2008 campaign, on "Meet the Press."

    There are seven states, worth 89 electoral votes, considered true "toss-up" states on NBC News' battleground map: Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, Florida and New Hampshire. Other competitive states include Nevada, which has leaned slightly for Obama in recent polls, and North Carolina, which has tended toward Romney in many recent polls.

    "All these states right now, we think the president's in a good position to win," Plouffe said.

    Both Obama and Romney spent Saturday barnstorming these battleground states in hope of shoring up their base and shaking loose prized undecided voters in the final hours of the campaign. But their professed confidence belied a much more competitive battle for the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency, especially as an uncertain finale loomed over the 2012 campaign.

    The Romney campaign said its Sunday schedule — which took the former Massachusetts governor to Pennsylvania and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to Minnesota — both states which Republicans have only contested as of late — was a sign of surging national momentum. But Democrats castigated those trips as a sign of desperation, as Romney scrambled for new pathways to 270.

    One of the most hotly contested battleground states includes Virginia, which Obama has put into play in 2008 and again in 2012. It also has one of the earliest poll closing times in the nation on Tuesday, and could offer political observers an early indicator of the trend lines in the election.

    "We're going to win this state, and I think we're going to win it a lot bigger than people are predicting," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican who represents a Richmond-area district.

    He added: "I see here on the ground, there is a lot of enthusiasm for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan."

    But political bravado is a well-worn tradition for the closing days of the elections, and Plouffe was quick to seize upon Romney's plans to spend some of his final campaign stops in Virginia and Florida, two states he might not be able to afford losing come Tuesday night.

    "We think Gov. Romney's playing defense," the White House aide said of Virginia and Florida. "I'd rather be the president today than Gov. Romney in terms of those two states."

    Plouffe also characterized the Obama campaign's position in Iowa and Ohio — two footholds of the president's Midwestern "firewall" — as "commanding," though he cautioned the campaign must execute its get-out-the-vote efforts on Tuesday if it is to secure those states.

    Follow the final weekend of the campaign with NBC Politics:

  • New player jumps into state elections to push education overhaul

    By Sarah Butrymowicz, The Hechinger Report

    A dozen states are poised to pass significant education reforms this year, depending on the outcome of next week’s election. State-level candidates in many of them want to abolish teacher tenure and tie teacher evaluations to student tests. On the ground trying to make sure they win is a new organization, StudentsFirst, founded by former Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.


    The group has infused cash and organizing into races in states such as California, Iowa and Michigan, where teachers unions have historically dominated politics and enshrined such policies as tenure and pay based on seniority in state law. StudentsFirst  hopes to undercut unions’ power and remove many of the labor protections that unions support.  

    The 2012 election is the group’s first real test. In Missouri, another state on the brink of wide-scale changes in education, StudentsFirst has poured more than $100,000 into campaigns since the primaries and recruited more than 40,000 members to push for the election of 21 candidates it has endorsed. Nationwide, the group has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in primary and general elections.

    Due to the reputation of its founder as a tough and unapologetic enemy of unions, StudentsFirst has the highest profile among a small number of similar groups, including Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform, that have emerged in the last few years to fight policies typically supported by unions. Most recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced he had formed a super PAC to back candidates that support, among other things, the education reforms he has pushed in New York, including expansion of school choice.


    “Typically if you voted for school reform, you came under the wrath of the protectors of the status quo,” said Tim Melton, the StudentsFirst legislative director, referring to the unions. “[We’re a] new group that lets people know if they want to take some of those tough votes, someone’s going to stand with them.”

    For years, the unions have dominated the political landscape on education. They are often  major campaign donors and organizers for candidates that they endorse. The rise of outside groups eager to influence education policy corresponds with a growing number of candidates who are paying attention to the issue. In recent years, nearly every state in the country has passed some sort of significant education reform bill. They have changed curriculum standards, expanded charter schools or revamped teacher evaluations.

    “When you look at education, it hasn’t been something that has been a political dynamo issue for candidates to run on,” Melton said. “You just now see in the last three years a major shift.”

    More from The Hechinger Report

    StudentsFirst came to Missouri in January after being approached by both Democratic and Republican members of the state Legislature. It worked to get a charter school bill passed, but fell short on a bill that would reform Missouri’s teacher tenure law. The legislation would have extended the time before a teacher can receive tenure from five years to 10. It passed narrowly in the House, but failed in the Senate. Union officials say five years is more than enough time to weed out low-performing teachers.

    StudentsFirst plans on returning to the issue after the election is over, and Melton is hopeful the numbers will be on his side this time. “It could be one or two members in a chamber that could make a significant difference,” Melton said.

    The Missouri National Education Association (MNEA) and StudentsFirst have endorsed opposing candidates in eight races, including the race for lieutenant governor, and the same candidate in five. Chris Guinther, MNEA president, stressed that the union did not pay attention to the StudentsFirst endorsements. Her organization does its own independent selection process, she said.

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    But she is unhappy about the presence of StudentsFirst in state politics. “I would hope the Missouri legislators are willing to listen to those who work in our public schools every day rather than someone who flies in from California,” she said. “Who in public education, who in service to our children doesn’t put students first?”

    The Missouri Association of Teachers has found even less common ground with StudentsFirst. The union supports only one candidate that StudentsFirst also endorsed. In an open letter on its website, the association said the campaign of any candidate that takes StudentFirst money will be considered “anti-public education.”

    Melton said he was unaware of the letter. “They represent their members, we represent the interest of students. I would hope that we can find [joint interest],” he said. “You can give them my phone number if they actually want to have a real conversation about that.”

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    Whether StudentsFirst will have the impact it’s hoping for, however, remains to be seen. Only 10 of 17 candidates the group endorsed in Missouri’s primary elections last spring won.

    StudentsFirst could gain as much power as the unions, eventually, said Mike Antonucci, director of the Education Intelligence Agency, a group that monitors teachers unions. That won’t happen any time soon though, he said. The unions have a built-in organizational structure that others have yet to match.

    Teachers' unions push to get educators elected

    “It looks to me like StudentsFirst has money; they don’t have the organization,” said Antonucci. “If you’re going to compete with [the unions], you have to have both.”

    Nov. 6 will provide the first clues as to whether StudentsFirst is likely to be a true player in state elections.

    “Part of what we perceive to be their influence will actually be determined next Tuesday,” Guinther said, noting that her group was braced to have a tenure debate again. “I’m sure they’ll be back.”

    This story,"New player in education jumps into state races," was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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  • Storm aftermath not likely to delay election

    By NBC's Pete Williams

    Could the vast disruption caused by Sandy prompt a delay in the Nov. 6 presidential election?  Voting may be extensively disrupted in some of the swing states, including Virginia and Ohio.

    MSNBC's Chris Jansing talks with NBC's Pete Williams about the impact Superstorm Sandy may have on the election, and the issues that would surround a possible postponement of the presidential election.

    The answer is, yes, it could undoubtedly be delayed.  But it almost certainly won't be.

    The Constitution gives Congress the authority to establish the day for presidential elections, and since 1845, a federal law has set the date as "the Tuesday after the first Monday in November." Congress could change the date, just as it could change any federal statute. But it would have to act quickly.

    And of course, it's the states, not the federal government, that run elections in America.  Many states in areas not affected by Sandy's wrath would be likely to oppose a delay and its attendant costs. They could choose to go ahead with their elections for all but president and have a separate election for president later.  But such a move would undoubtedly suppress the turnout. 

    Past disasters, including weather emergencies, have forced postponement of state and local elections.  New York state suspended its primary election in 2001 -- on September 11th, the day of the suicide hijack attacks. But few states have a regular procedure for doing it.  Florida, with its long experience in dealing with hurricanes, is one of the few with specific procedures in place, allowing the governor to suspend or delay elections.

    Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

    Andrew Burton / Getty Images

    Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

    Launch slideshow

    John Fortier, a nationally respected expert on presidential elections, points out additional problems, writing on a blog sponsored by the Moritz School of Law at Ohio State University. 

    "If voting were disrupted and postponed in one state," Fortier says, "then we will likely know the results in all the other states before voting can resume in the affected state. If the affected state or states are determinative of the electoral college outcome, the pressure and focus on that one state would be enormous."

    Among other questions, he says, are what to do with votes already cast.

    Finally, consider the fact that never before the U.S. history has a presidential election been postponed or canceled, not even during the Civil War.

    Slideshow: On the campaign trail

    Reuters, Getty Images

    In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

    Launch slideshow

  • Hurricane Sandy puts pressure on early voting

    By Tom Curry, NBC News national affairs writer

    The deadly hurricane that is sweeping across the Eastern seaboard interrupted early voting in some states Monday, even as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney urged voters in Ohio to cast their ballots early.

    Speaking at a campaign event in Ohio, Romney noted the significance of early voting: “I know that early voting has begun. Get out there and vote, I see a voter right there. Get out and vote, we want ya early. We need you. It sends a very strong message ...”

    He explained that “all the media follows how much early voting is going on, and they look at your zip code and where you live and make an estimate of whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, and they decide whether we’re ahead or we’re falling behind.”

    Mitt Romney campaigns in the critical battleground state of Ohio as a poll shows a dead heat between the governor and President Obama. Watch the entire speech.

    But Hurricane Sandy’s path of disruption and destruction may turn some would-be early voters into old-fashioned Election Day voters if it keeps them from driving or walking to their poll station over the next few days.

    Early voting has been under way in Ohio since Oct. 2. Much of the state was under high wind warnings from the National Weather Service for Monday and Tuesday.

    Matt McClellan, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, said Monday that the county boards of elections prepare contingency plans for emergency situations that are reviewed by Husted’s office.

    “The Secretary of State's office is also receiving daily updates from the Ohio Emergency Management Agency on the weather. We are confident that at this point in time local boards are prepared,” McClellan said.

    In West Virginia – which, unlike its neighbor Ohio, hasn’t been a hotly contested state in the presidential race – snow was falling Monday as forecasters  predicted total snowfall of up to three feet in some parts of the state.

    West Virginia has an early in-person voting option and early voting has been going on since last Wednesday. Secretary of State Natalie Tennant said in a statement Monday that early voting was continuing, but she cautioned, “If you don’t have to go out, stay inside and make sure you are ready for this storm. Be mindful of high water, downed power lines, and icy conditions. Please, do not go out and risk your safety to try and make it to an early voting location. There are several more days of early voting and even Election Day, which is next Tuesday.”

    Tennant said her office is working with county clerks to develop contingency plans for early voting locations in the event that electricity is cut off.

    In Maryland, with its coastline directly in the path of Hurricane Sandy, Gov. Martin O’Malley issued an executive order Sunday canceling early voting for Monday and Tuesday and extending the early voting period through Friday.

    The October surprise came later than usual and the campaigns are left with big decisions – how will the weather we're seeing along the East Coast impact strategy in the battleground states going forward. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

    In Virginia, a state that Romney and President Barack Obama have fought fiercely to win, absentee voting is permitted (by mail or in person) in cases where a person will be absent from the state on business on Election Day or in cases of disability or illness.

    Due to the hurricane, local election offices were closed Monday in several of the state’s largest cities and counties including Loudon County, Arlington County, and Fairfax County.

    In-person absentee voting in Virginia ends at the close of business on Saturday.

    Other states in the track of Hurricane Sandy that do not allow for early in-person voting are: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and Connecticut. They do permit absentee ballots to be cast by mail, although in some cases a reason is required.

    In Pennsylvania, where Vice President Joe Biden will be campaigning Friday and where a pro-Romney Super PAC will be spending $2 million on TV ads in the final days of the campaign, there is no early in-person voting, but voters can mail in an absentee ballot.

    Slideshow: On the campaign trail

    Reuters, Getty Images

    In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

    Launch slideshow

    The deadline in Pennsylvania for applying to a voter’s county Board of Elections for an absentee ballot is Tuesday. Completed absentee ballots must be received by 5 p.m. on Friday, but since this is a presidential election year, the state will count absentee ballots received by the close of the polls on Election Day for the offices of president and vice president.

    The hurricane’s impact on voters was reaching as far away as Minnesota, where Secretary of State Mark Ritchie told people in his state who were being deployed to the East Coast to assist with the emergency response to Hurricane Sandy to vote absentee-in-person before they leave or to request an absentee ballot.

    “We want to make sure every eligible Minnesota voter can vote. My office is contacting emergency-response organizations, utility companies and relevant government agencies to ensure that those who have already departed and others who are being mobilized can vote,” Ritchie said in a statement.

  • Hurricane injects uncertainty into presidential campaign

    By Michael O'Brien, NBC News

     

    Updated at 9:16 p.m. ET: An impending hurricane injected a new degree of uncertainty into the 2012 presidential campaign, impacting candidates' schedules and early voting opportunities just nine days before Election Day.

    President Barack Obama called the storm "serious and big" following a briefing at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA), warning residents in the storm's path "to take this very seriously."

    In the campaigns' waning days, President Barack Obama is forced to juggle dual responsibilities – the incoming storm and his push to encourage early voting. Several key swing states are in the storm's path. NBC's Peter Alexander reports.

    The president also canceled campaign trips to Virginia and Colorado scheduled for early this week, the last full week of campaigning this election, in order to monitor Hurricane Sandy. The storm's impending landfall was poised to add a new variable to a presidential contest that has tightened considerably in its closing days, along with scores of downballot races up and down the East Coast.

    Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney canceled planned stops in Virginia — one of the most hotly-contested battleground states this fall — on Sunday and headed to Ohio instead. 

    Obama spent Sunday in Washington, where he traveled to FEMA headquarters following church services early this afternoon. The administration authorized several emergency declarations for states sitting in Sandy's path, and Obama convened a conference call with administration officials and governors in the storm's path to receive an update on preparations.

    The storm put some of Obama's campaigning on hold, as he canceled a northern Virginia event for that afternoon, along with an event in Colorado Springs on Tuesday. Obama was still set, though, to travel to Youngtown, Ohio on Monday morning. The president appears — for now — intent upon returning to the campaign trail on Tuesday evening in Green Bay, Wis. His campaign also advised on Sunday afternoon that two stops on Wednesday in Ohio would go forward.

    President Barack Obama addresses the nation on Hurricane Sandy as the storm prepares to hit the East Coast.

    The storm might have rearranged Romney's own campaign itinerary, though it's unclear whether the GOP presidential hopeful will be able to return to Virginia soon. Romney didn't address the storm in his remarks in Celine, Ohio, but his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, urged voters in the Buckeye State to keep East Coasters in their thoughts and prayers.

    Nonetheless, the hurricane could prove to be the proverbial "October Surprise" of this campaign as it upended other elements of the election well before it had even made landfall.

    Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) canceled early voting in his state for Monday, a decision other east coast governors could mirror. That could have an especially pronounced impact on a state like Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election and home to a competitive Senate race.

    Late Sunday, Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed an executive order to extend in-person voter registration in Connecticut to Thursday, Nov. 1. The deadline had originally been Tuesday.

    Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, said on Sunday's TODAY show that he didn't worry about power outages or other complications from the storm diminishing voting in the state.

    Virginia and its 13 critical electoral votes are in play, but now Hurricane Sandy threatens to throw the campaigns off course. Obama and Romney have canceled appearances there. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    "It's going to be, probably, seven days from the time the storm passes 'til Election Day," he said. "We've already taken precautions to move up polling places to a higher spot for restoration. The power companies are well aware of that. So I don't think it's going to interfere with voting."

    But Democrats are counting on robust turnout — both through early voting and on Nov. 6 — to propel Obama to a second term. While Sandy's projected path is uncertain, its rain and wind could discourage voters in the key swing state of Ohio from voting early, a practice employed by both campaigns to bank votes ahead of Election Day.

    "Obviously we want unfettered access to the polls, because we believe that the more people come out, the better we’re going to do,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama's re-election campaign, said Sunday on CNN. “And so, to the extent that it makes it harder, that’s a source of concern.”

    The president himself downplayed worries about the storm's impact on voting. 

    "We don't anticipate that at this point but we're obviously going to have to take a look," he said in Washington following his FEMA briefing.

  • Are you planning NOT to vote in the November election?

    We’ve heard from undecided voters, and now we want to hear from those of you who will not vote in the Nov. 6 election. In 2008, 38.4 percent eligible voters didn’t cast a ballot, according to Factcheck.org.

    If you won’t vote – for whatever reason – and you’re game to be interviewed for a story we're running next week, please contact us.

    Thank you.

  • Social media analysis: 'Bayonets' fail to cut Romney, but overall debate sentiment swings Obama's way

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    Campaign social media tracking for Tuesday, Oct. 23. Click the image for the full report.

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    A majority of social media users believes President Barack Obama did better in this week's foreign policy presidential debate than Republican nominee Mitt Romney did, according to NBC Politics' computer-assisted analysis of almost 1 million posts during and after the debate.

    M. Alex Johnson M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for NBC News. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

    The data indicate that Obama's attack line about "horses and bayonets" Monday night had less effect than was presumed in the immediate post-debate media analysis — and may even have hurt Obama as much as it helped him, once Romney partisans widely circulated rebuttals from conservative-leaning commentators.

    But more commenters cited Romney's frequent agreements with Obama as evidence that he had nothing new to offer on foreign policy, helping Obama's advantage grow as time has passed.

    NBC Politics analyzed 988,000 post-debate posts on Twitter and Facebook using a tool called ForSight, a data platform developed by Crimson Hexagon Inc., which many research and business organizations have adopted to gauge public opinion in new media. It isn't the same as traditional surveys, which seek to reflect national opinion; instead, it's a broad, non-predictive snapshot of what's being said by Americans who follow politics and are active on Facebook, Twitter or both at a particular moment in time, and why they're saying it.

    Overall, a slim majority favored Obama in comments posted through 1:30 p.m. ET Wednesday:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    That works out to a 51 percent to 49 percent advantage among people who expressed a clear preference for either candidate.

    More social media analysis from NBCPolitics.com

    Explainer: Can you scientifically quantify social media opinion?

    Favorable sentiment swung noticeably as media commentators weighed in with their arguments. For example, Obama initially held a slim advantage the day after the debate:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    A visual representation of the topics people discussed overnight and into early Tuesday morning indicates that people reacted to broad impressions:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    But after commentators and analysts began being heard on the morning television news shows and read in the morning papers, people developed firmer positions as the day progressed. A different visualization breaks out the specific topics people talked about Tuesday — not only Iran and other foreign policy issues, but also economic issues:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    People who favored Romney were impressed by his firmness and his arguments that the administration mishandled the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last month:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    Twitter.com — 1:25 a.m. ET, Oct. 24

    People who favored Obama, by contrast, picked up on both candidates' insistence on pivoting toward the economy:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    Twitter.com — 9:36 p.m. ET Oct. 22

    What appeared to have been a key moment in the debate came when Obama responded to Romney's assertion that the U.S. military was weaker today than it had ever been, specifically citing what he characterized as the shrinking U.S. warship fleet. Obama's rejoinder lit up Twitter and Facebook.

    You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed.

    The Hill's Karen Finney and author Goldie Taylor discuss President Barack Obama's "horses and bayonets" debate line.

    On Tuesday, however, media organizations — among them The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — and conservative commentators began running the numbers, and they largely concluded that Obama's zinger wasn't completely justified.

    One article in particular, by the commentator AWR Hawkins on the conservative site Breitbart.com, gained heavy traction among conservative commentators on social media, being cited hundreds of times by Romney defenders as evidence that Obama didn't know what he was talking about:

    Twitter.com — 11:04 p.m. ET Oct. 23

    Facebook.com — 6:33 a.m. ET Oct. 23

    Obama supporters began a counterattack Wednesday, widely circulating Rush Limbaugh's remarks Tuesday:

    In fact, a lot of people on our side thought he agreed with Obama too much. A lot of people on our side didn't like that debate last night, folks, I'll just tell you. If my circle of friends is any indication, a lot of people thought Romney got his clock cleaned, didn't like it at all, think the election's lost. I'm not kidding you.

    The topic dominated pro-Obama discussion late Tuesday through midday Wednesday:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    Twitter.com — 11:23 p.m. ET Oct. 23

    Facebook.com — 9:25 p.m. ET Oct. 23

    Commentary like that appeared to be taking a toll. Overall, Obama's advantage remained within a couple of points. But then there's the chart just for Wednesday:

    NBC Politics and Crimson Hexagon Inc.

  • Exclusive: President Obama says tight race doesn't surprise him, despite accomplishments

    By Jessica Hopper
    Rock Center

    UPDATED 6:50PM EST -- In the midst of 48 hours of non-stop campaigning in crucial swing states, President Barack Obama said that the tightening of the race between him and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney doesn’t surprise him.

    NBC's Williams with President Barack Obama in Davenport, IA. (Photo Credit: Neal Carter/NBC News)

    In an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams, during a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa, the president said that he never believed that the excitement surrounding his historic election four years ago and the achievement of taking out al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden would inflate his likelihood of re-election.

    “You guys have some short memories. Folks in your business were writing me off a year ago, saying there's no way I would win,” President Obama said. “These things go in ebbs and flows and, you know, the one thing I've tried to always be is just steady in terms of what I believe in, who I'm fighting for, and, you know, I think that one of the qualities I bring to bear in this campaign is, people see, what did I say I was going to do in 2008?  And what have I delivered?  And they can have some confidence that the things I say, I mean.”

    Both the president and former Massachusetts Governor Romney are fiercely campaigning, criss-crossing the country in the final 13 days of the campaign.

    “We always knew this was going to be a close race from the start.  And what we have right now is a lead that we’ve maintained throughout the campaign and we are going to just continue to drive home the message that there are two fundamentally different choices in this election about where we take the country,” the president said.  

    After speaking to the crowd in Davenport, the president’s first stop in an eight-state campaign blitz, Obama sat down with Williams and discussed his relationship with Romney, his lackluster performance in the election’s first presidential debate and his administration’s handling of the crisis in Libya.

    Obama defended his campaign’s release of a 20-page document detailing his plan for the next four years. The document was released the day after the final presidential debate and left pundits questioning whether its release was a late move made by a campaign that believes its opponent might be gaining momentum. 

    “I don’t know why you say that this is late in the game.  This is exactly what I laid out at my convention,” the president told Williams.  “Every point that’s in there is what we said when I accepted the Democratic nomination, is what we do to build up the middle class in this country and it’s been on our website for weeks and I hope that everybody takes an opportunity to read it, because as folks now narrow their focus on the election, in fact people here in Iowa are voting. You know, the more informed voters are and the more engaged they are about how big the stakes are, the better I think we’re going to do.”

    When asked about the dynamic between he and Gov. Romney, the president said that his feelings towards Romney are no different than the feelings other presidential candidates have had before.

    “I don’t think anybody would say that while you were in the middle of a campaign that you felt deep affection for the other guy, because, you know, look, you’re fighting for competing visions,” President Obama said.

    From Iowa, the president traveled to Colorado and Nevada for campaign events before flying overnight to Florida to continue the second day of his battleground swing.

    NBC News cameras have been granted wide-ranging access to the president as he embarks on his multi-state journey in the all-out push to appeal to voters. Clips from the president’s interview will be aired Wednesday evening on NBC Nightly News and Thursday morning on Today, with a complete behind-the-scenes profile airing Thursday night at 10pm/9c on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

     

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