Obama lead grows, Romney still in striking distance

Reuters: President Barack Obama has a growing lead in polls and an easier path to the White House than challenger Mitt Romney, but the Republican is still within striking distance with eight weeks to go before the election.

Obama expanded his edge over Romney after their back-to-back nominating conventions and has leads in eight of the top nine battleground states, giving him an advantage but not a lock on the race.

While bumps in the polls after a convention often do not last, Romney is running out of chances to recast the race and win over a small group of undecided voters. Three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate in October are the last major campaign events before the November 6 election.

Tracking polls by Gallup and Rasmussen gave Obama a 5-point edge on Monday. A CNN/ORC poll on Monday gave Obama a 6-point lead among likely voters, up from a tie before the Democratic convention.

The CNN poll found only three percent of likely voters were still undecided or backing another candidate aside from Obama or Romney.

The Romney camp played down the significance of Obama’s gains, releasing a memo from pollster Neil Newhouse describing it as “a sugar high” and predicting economic realities would bring the race back to the tight margins that have characterized it for months.

Romney, former head of a private equity firm, has argued his business experience makes him uniquely qualified to boost job growth and turn around a stumbling economy suffering from 8.1 percent unemployment.

But he has made no headway against Obama, whose campaign spent the summer hammering Romney in advertisements as an out-of-touch millionaire whose business experience mostly involved raiding companies for cash and leaving workers jobless.

Friday’s weaker than expected jobs report, released the morning after Obama concluded his convention, did not keep Obama from cracking 50% in the CNN poll and in his job approval rating recorded by Gallup.