“It would take me too long to go through all of the math.”

— Rep. Paul Ryan, in an interview on Fox News, after host Chris Wallace played a clip of President Obama saying “they tell you they’re gonna start talking specifics really soon, they don’t do it. And the reason is because the math doesn’t work.”

“This whole race is going to turn upside-down come Thursday morning.”

— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), in an interview on CBS News, arguing that Wednesday night’s presidential debate will mark a new stage in Mitt Romney’s campaign.

“If the election were held today, an Associated Press analysis shows Obama would win at least 271 electoral votes, with Ohio and Iowa now among the states he would carry.”

“To overtake Obama, Romney would need to quickly gain the upper hand in nearly all of the nine states where he and Obama are competing hardest.”

The latest Rand survey — an experimental polling method which uses the same single panel of voters over several months — confirms what nearly every other traditional poll has found: President Obama and Mitt Romney were running neck and neck until the Democratic convention and ever since then, Obama has been rising and Romney falling in the poll.

Obama now holds a seven point lead in the Rand survey over Romney, 50% to 43%.

For comparison, the Gallup tracking poll shows Obama leading by six points, 50% to 44%, while the Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Obama leading by five points, 47% to 42%.

A new Boston Globe poll in Massachusetts finds Elizabeth Warren (D) leading Sen. Scott Brown (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 43% to 38%, with another 18% still undecided.

This survey is the sixth of eight public polls taken this month that show Warren ahead.

Said pollster Andrew Smith: “It’s trending away from Brown. Brown right now is not doing well enough among Democrats to offset the advantage that ­Warren has. That’s just such a big obstacle to overcome for any Republican candidate in Massachusetts.”

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states, updated as needed through the day:

Arizona: Romney 46%, Obama 42% (Highground)

“It’s no newsflash that sometimes the Senate frustrates me.”

— Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), in an interview with NBC 12, when asked if he was contemplating another bid for Virginia governor next year.

Miranda Green: “From Al Gore’s loud sighing to Jimmy Carter saying he consulted his 12-year-old daughter on nuclear proliferation, presidential debates are full of memorable moments. But despite the fanfare that surrounds each election cycle’s televised events, historical data shows the debates are rarely game changers.”

“A 2008 Gallup study found that between 1960 and 2004, there were only two years where debates made a difference in actual votes. Instead, the most common outcome of the presidential debates is a slight popularity bump… Data from the Gallup study also saw no direct correlation between the winner of each debate and the winner of the presidency. The 2004 Kerry vs. Bush debate was cited as an example. Kerry was considered the victor of all three showdowns, but still lost the election.”

Donna Brazile: “The debates this year
will certainly have their moments. But both candidates are already so
well-known, the memorable lines will probably reinforce, rather than
change, voters’ perceptions.”

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.”