Despite his returning to the hospital for treatment of bipolar disorder and depression, a new We Ask America poll finds Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-IL) safely on his way to re-election with 58% support, followed by Brian Woodworth (R) at 27% and Marcus Lucas (I) at 15%.

“After two days of early voting in Nevada, Democrats boast that figures released by county elections officials show they hold a significant lead,” National Journal reports.

“About 53 percent of the voters who turned out on Saturday and Sunday in Clark County, the state’s most populous, were Democrats, while just 31 percent were Republicans. The 22-point disparity is higher than the 15 points by which Democrats outnumber Republicans–a sign, the party says, of the field organization Sen. Harry Reid and Nevada Democrats have spent a decade building.”

Meanwhile, Jon Ralston reviews two scenarios in which Nevada really could matter to the outcome of the presidential election.

President Obama put out a new ad which highlights the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his plan to end the war in Afghanistan.

The script: “A decade of war. That cost us dearly… President Obama ended the Iraq war. Mitt Romney would have left thirty thousand troops there, and called bringing them home ‘tragic.’ Obama’s brought thirty thousand soldiers back from Afghanistan. And has a responsible plan to end the war. Romney calls it Obama’s ‘biggest mistake.’ It’s time to stop fighting over there and start rebuilding over here.”

Alex Burns: “The commercial amounts to a preview of how Barack Obama will cast his
foreign policy record in the third and final debate with Romney, and it
underscores the need for both candidates to make foreign policy relevant
to voters as a concrete subject with implications here in the United
States.”

Meanwhile, the Romney campaign is out with a press release titled, “We can’t afford four more years of Obama’s foreign policy.”

[Read more…]

First Read: “Our latest national NBC/WSJ poll shows a 47%-47% tie among likely voters. Not all ties are created equal and the question is whether this tie signals a shift away from President Obama and toward Mitt Romney. The poll actually sends a lot of mixed messages on this front. The toplines, though, are not good for the president. The fact of the matter is 47% is a VERY precarious position for an incumbent. If this were 48-48 or 49-49, this would be a different conversation. A good ground game can make up 1 or 2 points; making up 3 points is a much taller order.”

“To put it another way: if this race is at 47%-47% the Sunday before the election, there’s going to be a run on Tums at every pharmacy in walking distance of the Obama campaign’s Chicago headquarters. But it’s not the Sunday before Election Day. And if you digest the entire poll, this race isn’t nearly as easy to handicap as it might look on paper. It’s that close, folks, and we can point to three reasons why President Obama will win on Nov. 6 and three reasons why Mitt Romney will win.”

Politico: “With a little more than two weeks left until judgment day, Barack Obama’s campaign is embracing a fundamentally defensive strategy centered on winning Ohio at all costs — while unleashing a new barrage of blistering attacks against Mitt Romney aimed at mobilizing a less-than-fired-up Democratic base.”

“A surging Romney is suddenly playing offense all over the map… In contrast to the grind-it-out Obama strategy, Romneyland’s working theory is that the momentum shift since Denver is a late-breaking, decisive wave that gives them the chance to not just win but win big.”

“Both campaigns are confident they can win. But their theory-of-the-case victory strategies couldn’t be more different. A buoyant Team Romney sees itself driving into Obama territory on a tailwind of enthusiasm. Team Obama is relying on a three-state solution — winning Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada puts him over the top — and more ‘Hit Mitt’ messaging geared at driving Democrats to the polls, a hybrid of hope and the hammer.”

Ryan Lizza: “In recent years, as the electorate has become more polarized, campaign tacticians have become more focussed on getting their own voters to the polls than on persuading others to change their allegiance. This year, the Obama campaign has a two-part strategy. First, they made what the campaign manager Jim Messina calls a ‘grand bet,’ spending heavily on a summer airwave blitz, with ads designed to soften up Mitt Romney in the eyes of voters; second, they have created a volunteer army on the ground to carry victory home.”

Mark Halperin believes that “barring some major game-changing dynamic, the polls are mostly a distraction the rest of the way. Romney probably needs to take Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio to win. That’s increasingly plausible. But we will go into Election Day not knowing if he can pull it off.”

Jeff Greenfield: “There is, of course, the possibility that the ground will shift in the last two weeks. A decisive debate performance, a late revelation, a sudden, seismic event at home or abroad could turn this cliffhanger into a rout. As of now, though, 2012 looks as if it’s about to join that foursome of elections, one that will require gallons of caffeine on Election Night and the next morning before we learn whether the moving vans will be called to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Missouri finds Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) leads Rep. Todd Akin (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 46% to 40%, with Libertarian Jonathan Dine at 6%.

Key finding: “There were a lot of reasons to think this race might shift back toward Todd Akin as the furor over his controversial comments in August died down. But his image has actually just continued to get worse as the election approaches. 31% of voters now say they have a favorable opinion of him to 57% with a negative one. It was a 33/55 spread earlier this month.”

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

Florida: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (Public Policy Polling)

Iowa: Obama 49%, Romney 48% (Public Policy Polling)

“With one debate left, President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney
are retreating from the campaign trail to bone up on foreign policy,
leaving the work of courting voters to their running mates,” the AP reports.

“Obama left Friday for Camp David… He was to remain there with advisers
until Monday morning. Romney was to spend the weekend in Florida with
aides preparing the debate.”

Chris Cillizza: “With the level of preparation that goes into these debates by both candidates — not to mention the litigating of the format to within an inch of its life by the campaign lawyers — surprises are a rarity. But the foreign policy-themed debate does offer the possibility that a question is asked for which one (or both) of the candidates doesn’t have an answer at the ready… A gap in knowledge would be very problematic for either man, but even more so for Romney, who, as mentioned above, largely remains an unknown (or unproven) commodity on foreign policy for most voters.”

David Sanger: “The early line is that this is an opportunity for Mr. Obama to shine, and to repair the damage from the first debate.”

New York Times: “It’s presidential election season, and the water-cooler conversations have become much more political. Is it O.K. to express your views at the office, or is it best to avoid such discussions?”

New York Times: “Through Friday, since Mr. Obama’s inauguration — his first 1,368 days in office — the Dow Jones industrial average has gained 67.9 percent. That’s an extremely strong performance — the fifth best for an equivalent period among all American presidents since 1900.”

The Wall Street Journal notes the odds of one presidential candidate winning the popular vote and the other winning the Electoral College are small, but “the makings of a split outcome are clearly there, due in part to a range of factors peculiar to this election.”

“Mr. Romney has clearly gained momentum since his strong debate performance in Denver earlier this month. For the first time all year he pulled ahead of Mr. Obama as measured by several running aggregates of national polls.”

“But many of these polls point to anomalies that could make a split outcome all the likelier. A month ago, when Mr. Obama was still ahead of his rival by seven percentage points in the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the president was losing by a similar margin in the South, which accounted for about a third of the poll’s base of voters.”

Here are the latest national polls of the presidential race:

Gallup: Romney 52%, Obama 45%

IBD/TIPP: Obama 48%, Romney 42%

NBC News/Wall Street Journal: Obama 47%, Romney 47%

Public Policy Polling: Obama 48%, Romney 48%

Rasmussen: Romney 49%, Obama 47%

“Their economic plans are not real. I think that’s clear.”

— New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an interview with the New York Times, on the two presidential candidates.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed President Obama for re-election.

“All politicians change positions over time — Obama in 2008 shifted his position on health care reform more to the center. But Romney’s frequent changes raise questions about his core principles and make his lack of policy details all the more troubling. They make you wonder if he would stand up to the more extreme elements in his own party, especially to the House Republicans who undercut Ohioan John Boehner’s attempts to negotiate a deficit and debt deal.”

New York Times: “The United States and Iran have agreed for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.”

“News of the agreement — a result of intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term — comes at a critical moment in the presidential contest, just two weeks before Election Day and a day before the final debate, which is to focus on national security and foreign policy.”