A new YWCA-sponsored poll finds President Obama leading Mitt Romney among women by a stunning 18 points, 49% to 31%.

American Prospect: “When Kennedy and Nixon had their debates, it was little exaggeration to say that nearly the whole country stopped and watched. The three debates got Nielsen ratings of around 60, meaning that the debates were on in 60 percent of all homes that owned televisions. The third debate’s rating of 61 was higher than any since, though the one debate in 1980 between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan came close.”

“Since then, however, viewership has declined significantly. The nadir was reached in 2000, when the final debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore got a rating of only 25.9. Viewership rebounded somewhat in 2008, but the highest-rated debate that year–the second–got a rating of only 38.8. For comparison, the most watched broadcast of the year–the Super Bowl–gets ratings in the mid-50s. So while the 1960 debates got Super Bowl-type ratings, debates in recent years have gotten ratings about 20 points lower. That means that though today’s population is almost twice what it was in 1960, the total number of people watching isn’t much higher than it was then.”

New York Times: “Mr. Romney’s team has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August. His strategy includes luring the president into appearing smug or evasive about his responsibility for the economy.”

The Miami Herald reports that two separate polls from Republican and Democratic third-party groups have arrived at the same conclusion: Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) is losing his reelection effort.

“Rivera, under separate federal criminal investigations into his personal and campaign finances, trails Democratic challenger Joe Garcia by nine percentage points in a Democratic poll and he’s behind by 10 points in the Republican survey — just outside the poll’s error margin.”

“I think my biggest worry would be
for his mental well being. I have all the confidence in the world of his
ability, his decisiveness, his leadership skills, his understand of the
economy, his understanding of what’s missing right now. The pieces that
are missing to get the jump started. So for me I think it would be the
emotional part of it.”

— Ann Romney, in an interview with KTVN-TV, on her worries if Mitt Romney were elected president.

“Some political scientists and Democratic strategists believe it’s now possible that President Obama could replicate his break-out Electoral College map from 2008, with the exception of Indiana, even if the popular vote is closer than four years ago,” Politico reports.

Said Democratic strategist Tad Devine: “He’s in a position to get close to 350 electoral votes, without a doubt. The president and his campaign successfully identified states where they could beat Romney, set out to define Romney in those places and did so well through the course of the spring and summer.”

The Week: Three paths to electoral victory for Mitt Romney.

Lexington: “America — a land that takes its liberties seriously — is unlikely to copy Belgium or Australia and adopt compulsory voting. But if it did, Mr Obama would romp home in November.”

Walter Shapiro: “Many of the well-known Ohio Republicans I interviewed offered their blunt assessments only after they were guaranteed complete anonymity. That is often the Faustian bargain of political journalism in 2012: robotic talking points on the record or something resembling honesty with no names attached. The reason, though, that I am emphasizing the don’t-quote-me part of the equation is that I was stunned by the vehemence of the thumbs-down-on-Mitt verdict. All but conceding the state to Obama, these Republicans were offering what may be the biggest rejection of Ohio since Philip Roth wrote Goodbye Columbus.”

Just published: Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man by Walter Stahr.

The Economist: “Seward was, Mr Stahr asserts, America’s second-greatest secretary of state, giving way only to John Quincy Adams, the force behind the Monroe Doctrine.”

“Seward’s problem is that he is condemned to be in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln. It might not have turned out so. At the 1860 Republican Party convention, Seward, then in his second term as a United States senator, had been favoured to win the party’s presidential nomination when the lesser-known Lincoln snatched it from him. Needing Seward’s Washington expertise, Lincoln tapped him for secretary of state. So powerful did Seward remain that he was targeted by the April 1865 cabal that killed Lincoln, surviving with some nasty knife wounds.”

Sources close to the Romney campaign tell National Review that Rep. Paul Ryan has reached out to conservative journalists — including George Will, Paul Gigot, Larry Kudlow — to express confidence about the Republican ticket’s chances, fielded questions, and asked for frank assessments.

“Ryan has made the calls one by one from the trail. The private press talks, which are ongoing, have often been lengthy and candid.”

“Obama campaign activists and volunteers have organized a massive debate-night effort, hosting 3,200 debate watch parties across 50 states for next Wednesday’s debate,” Politico reports.

Michelle Cottle: “Romney may be a good debater. He may even be a great debater. But at this point his team has fumbled the expectations game to the point where the governor will need to perform at a level well above anything we’ve seen from him to date if he wants to pull off the “W.” Just holding his own against the president — often a challenger’s primary hurdle — won’t change the game, and, at this point, a game changer is what people are demanding.”

Florida elections officials said that “at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“The controversy in Florida — which began with possibly fraudulent forms that first cropped up in Palm Beach County — has engulfed the Republican National Committee, which admitted Thursday that it urged state parties in seven swing states to hire the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting.The RNC paid the company at least $3.1 million — routed through the state parties of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia — to register voters and run get-out-the-vote operations. Wisconsin and Ohio had not yet paid the firm for get-out-the-vote operations it was contracted to do.”