The Obama campaign team has made it clear they are going to focus on recapturing some of the women's vote that has drifted to Mitt Romney since the first debate. An ad that is now running in a key swing state says that Romney would overturn Roe v. Wade and that is just one example of what voters will probably see more of in the next 18 days.

Polls taken in September showed Romney picking up steam with blue-collar, Republican leaning women who have lately been labeled "Wal-Mart Moms." Yet when the former Massachusetts governor began cutting into the more educated women voters who tend to lean Democratic, that's when Obama's team leapt into action.

ABC/Washington Post conducted a survey of women over the last two weeks that has found Obama falling behind Romney among college-educated females – a group that the president captured easily in 2008. more >>

A rapidly growing number of Latinos support same-sex marriage, mirroring growing support among the general public, according to a recently released Pew Research Center survey. However, the majority of Hispanic evangelical Protestants remain opposed to same-sex marriage.

In a presidential election season in which the DNC has made support of same-sex marriage part of its platform for the first time in history, tracking how voters feel on the issue has become another important gauge on which way voters are leaning.

For the first time since the Pew Hispanic Center began asking the question in its National Survey of Latinos, more Hispanics favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally (52%) than oppose same-sex marriage (34%). As recently as 2006, these figures were reversed (56% of Latinos opposed same-sex marriage, while 31% supported it). more >>

Among Latino registered voters, support for President Barack Obama is higher among Catholics and those with no religious affiliation than among evangelical Protestants, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Obama has the support of 73 percent of Latino Catholics and 82 percent of Latinos with no religious affiliation, but only half (50 percent) of Latino evangelicals. Obama's main rival in the presidential race, Republican Mitt Romney, has the support of 39 percent of Latino evangelicals, but only 19 percent of Latino Catholics and seven percent of Latinos with no religious affiliation.

Among all Latino registered voters, Obama has a 48 percentage point advantage over Romney, 69 to 21 percent, according to the survey. more >>

Looking at the current swing states in the presidential election, one possible outcome is that President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney will each receive 269 electoral college votes.

The current Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls shows Obama at 46.9 percent and Romney at 47.4 percent, indicating that with 19 days until Election Day, the race is very close.

There are currently 11 swing states which carry a total of 146 Electoral College votes -- Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (6), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13) and Wisconsin (10). With the remaining states, Romney has 191 Electoral College votes and Obama has 201 Electoral College votes. more >>

MSNBC host Chris Matthews said earlier this week that GOP presidential candidate team Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would run the country like Shariah Law if elected, because of what he described as their "extreme" stances on abortion.

"Whatever that means," Matthews said according to Fox News, while commenting the second presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Romney, explaining that he thinks Romney would push for 14th Amendment rights of life, liberty and property to newly formed embryos. "An egg that had just been fertilized, right after sex, if you will."

"And to have that notion that that would be a person under this personhood thing that Ryan's pushing, and under the 14th Amendment rights, the platform that Romney's running on. This is extremism. I say (to the) center right tonight -- it's almost like Shariah." more >>

After the GOP and Democratic conventions had adjourned by early September, the Romney campaign was growing increasingly concerned about the polling differences that separated them and President Obama. Now after two presidential debates and with Americans starting to pay serious attention to which candidate they're actually going to vote for, Romney's chances are looking better by the day.

The average net favorability for Romney in seven post-debate polls has increased to 5.4 percent with Obama's lagging behind at 5 percent.

On April 1 of this year, the Real Clear Politics average of all major polls showed Obama with a solid lead over Romney, 47.7 percent to 43 percent. Although Romney gained some ground by mid-summer, he fell back to the numbers by Aug. 12, before pulling within .7 percent of Obama at the close of the GOP convention in Tampa. President Obama widened the gap to four points by the end of September. more >>