First Read: “Is this campaign about one region and one region alone? How the Midwest goes, so goes this election? Now the question is whether Mitt Romney and Republicans have made inroads in the Midwestern battlegrounds or not. They say they have. But our new NBC/WSJ/Marist polls of Iowa and Wisconsin, plus our survey last week of Ohio, suggest that President Obama has built a firewall in the Midwest, even after Romney’s momentum from that first presidential debate.”

“In Wisconsin, Obama leads Romney by six points among likely voters, 51%-45%, which is virtually unchanged from the margin last month. In Iowa, Obama is up by eight points, 51%-43%, which also is nearly identical to where it was in September. And as we revealed last week, Obama was ahead in Ohio, 51%-45%. What’s significant here: If Obama wins all three states, he surpasses 270 electoral votes. But if Romney is able to pick off one of them, that widens the GOP’s path to 270 and narrows the Democratic one.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Marie Claire magazine in a wide-ranging interview that she will not run for president in 2016.

Said Clinton: “I have been on this high wire of national and international politics and leadership for 20 years. It has been an absolutely extraordinary personal honor and experience. But I really want to just have my own time back. I want to just be my own person.”

“I was a ’73 graduate. I should have been ’72, but I stayed an extra year to work on our party rating.”

— West Virginia U.S. Senate John Raese (R), quoted by the Daily Athenaeum, on attending West Virginia University.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) gave a frank assessment to the Scranton Times-Tribune of why Sen. Bob Casey (D) is in a much closer than expected re-election race with Tom Smith (R).

Said Rendell: “Casey? He hasn’t run a campaign. He’s run one ad, a stupid tea party ad. The tea party ad isn’t bad, but that’s all they’ve run. They’ve run a non-campaign up until now, and Smith has put a lot of money into the campaign. … You start spending money, that’ll change.”

“With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance… There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing.”

— Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), quoted by WGN, saying he was against abortion “without exception” because it’s no longer medically necessary to conduct an abortion to save the life of a mother.

“As Mitt Romney gains ground in crucial states like Florida and Virginia, President Obama is taking steps to shore up support in smaller battlegrounds that could prove decisive in a razor-close race,” Politico reports.

“That’s because if Romney can’t put Ohio in his column — the Buckeye State has so far proved stubbornly immune to the Republican’s gains elsewhere — he’ll need to win most of the remaining swing states to capture the presidency.”

After Mitt Romney made an awkward comment at the last presidential debate, Amazon customers are leaving hilarious reviews of binders. 

Nate Silver comments on the Gallup tracking poll which shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by seven points today — results which “are deeply inconsistent with the results that other polling firms are showing in the presidential race, and the Gallup poll has a history of performing very poorly when that is the case.”

“In 2000, for example, Gallup had George W. Bush 16 points ahead among likely voters in polling it conducted in early August. By Sept. 20, about six weeks later, they had Al Gore up by 10 points instead: a 26-point swing toward Mr. Gore over the course of a month and a half. No other polling firm showed a swing remotely that large. Then in October 2000, Gallup showed a 14-point swing toward Mr. Bush over the course of a few days, and had him ahead by 13 points on Oct. 27 — just 10 days before an election that ended in a virtual tie.”

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

Colorado: Obama 50%, Romney 47% (Public Policy Polling)

Iowa: Obama 51%, Romney 43% (NBC News/Marist)

Florida: Obama 47%, Romney 44% (Newsmax/Zogby)

Michigan: Obama 52%, Romney 46% (EPIC-MRA)

Michigan: Obama 44%, Romney 41% (Denno Research)

North Carolina: Romney 52%, Obama 46% (Rasmussen)

Ohio: Obama 49%, Romney 48% (Rasmussen)

Pennsylvania: Romney 49%, Obama 45% (Susquehanna)

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

Wisconsin: Obama 51%, Romney 45% (NBC News/Marist)

Chris Cillizza: “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Romney loses women on Nov. 6 by 8.5 points — his average deficit in those three polls among registered voters… That would be a better showing among women than John McCain made in 2008 (lost women by 13), George Bush made in 2000 (lost women by 11) and Bob Dole made in 1996 (lost women by 16). It would be roughly equal to the eight-point margin that George H.W. Bush lost women to Bill Clinton in 1992.”

“So, for all of the chatter about Romney’s women problems, he is currently positioned to do as well or better than every Republican presidential candidate among female voters save one: George W. Bush in 2004 who lost among women by just three points to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.”

Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca “is once again endorsing a presidential nominee – and once again, it’s the challenger he’s picking,” the Detroit Free Press reports.

While he didn’t make an endorsement four years ago, he supported John Kerry in 2004  and George W. Bush in 2000.

Interestingly, Iacocca supported the Obama administration’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler.

Ahead of next week’s presidential debate on foreign policy, a new Pew Research poll finds that President Obama and Mitt Romney run about even on most foreign policy issues.

On the question of who can do a better job making wise decisions about foreign policy, 47% of voters favor Obama and 43% Romney. This represents a substantial gain for Romney, who trailed Obama by 15 points on foreign policy issues in September.

Here are the latest daily tracking polls:

Gallup: Romney 52%, Obama 45%

IBD/TIPP: Obama 46%, Romney 46%

Public Policy Polling: Obama 48%, Romney 48%

Rasmussen: Romney 49%, Obama 47%

Gawker reports a mysterious new website promising “an October Surprise that will change the 2012 election.”

The big news — which is hinted in blurry teaser documents — will be unveiled at 5:30 PM ET on October 22nd.

Let the speculation begin.

Update: BuzzFeed reports the site is run by the same people who did “Greatest Rickroll Ever.”

“We messed it up, he didn’t fix it, put us back in.”

— Former President Bill Clinton, quoted by TPM, paraphrasing Mitt Romney’s campaign message.

A new Hartford Courant poll in Connecticut shows Chris Murphy (D) leading Linda McMahon (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 44% to 38%.

Meanwhile, President Obama has a healthy 51% to 37% lead over Mitt Romney in the presidential race.