Let’s just say that these three polls underscore a)the bounce President Barack Obama got from the Democratic convention and b) the increased critical important of the Presidential debates in this election for Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney:
After two political conventions and heading into the post-Labor Day sprint, President Barack Obama leads Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the key battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Virginia, according to new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls of each of these three states.
In both Florida and Virginia, Obama is ahead of Romney by five points among likely voters (including those leaning toward a particular candidate), 49 percent to 44 percent.
In Ohio, the president’s lead is seven points, 50 percent to 43 percent.
Among a larger pool of registered voters, Obama’s advantage over Romney slightly increases to 7 points in Virginia, 8 in Florida and 9 in Ohio.
“You’d rather be in Obama’s shoes than Romney’s in these three critical states,” Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, says of the poll results.
But he adds that Obama’s leads are not “insurmountable,” especially as the two candidates prepare for their first presidential debate on Oct. 3 in Colorado.
MORE:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.