The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows Mitt Romney earning 49% of the vote and President Obama attracting 44% support. Three percent (3%) would vote for a third party candidate, while another three percent (3%) are undecided.

The uptick for Romney comes as investor confidence has fallen six points in the wake of last week’s disappointing jobs report. Looking ahead five years, just 44% of Americans believe the nation’s economy will be stronger than it is today. That’s the lowest level of long-term optimism ever measured...

House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday that President Barack Obama can't run for re-election on his economic record so his campaign will "pull out every bogey man that they can."

The Ohio Republican tells CBS News that he and Obama were close to a deal to break the budget stalemate when Obama "lost his courage."

Boehner says he agreed to raise revenue by overhauling the tax code and Obama initially accepted changes in entitlement programs. Instead, the speaker says, Obama ended up advocating higher tax rates for the wealthy...

The chairman of the Republican National Committee said Monday that the key to winning over Hispanic voters this year is to convince them that President Obama has failed to strengthen their economic prospects — not by pandering to them with promises of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Speaking to reporters in a conference call, Reince Priebus described the economy as an “emotional” issue for Hispanic voters, the nation’s fastest-growing voting bloc, and said that Mr. Obama has failed to deliver the kind of immigration reform that he touted during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“The president delivered a fat goose egg on the issue,” he said, specifically referring to the president’s failure to overhaul federal immigration laws or offer a pathway to citizenship for those in the country illegally. “He is the person who traveled and campaigned on the basis of [a citizenship] pathway and delivered nothing.

A large majority of American voters think gas prices pose a serious threat to the nation’s economic recovery. In addition, voters are sharply divided over whether President Obama could do more to bring down gas prices -- or whether he even wants gas prices to go down.

Nearly half of voters, 47 percent, say high gas prices pose an “extremely” serious threat to the economy, according to a Fox News poll released Monday. Another 40 percent consider it a “somewhat” serious threat.

Sixty percent of Republicans think high prices at the pump are an “extremely” serious threat to economic recovery. That’s nearly twice as many as the 33 percent of Democrats who think so...

Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney issued a bruising broadside attack Wednesday on President Obama’s credibility, saying he is running a stealth campaign to deceive American voters and challenging the nation’s news editors to be serious referees in this year’s election.

“I find myself missing the presence of editors to exercise quality control. I miss the days of two or more sources to a story, when at least one source was actually named,” Mr. Romney said, addressing the annual convention of the American Society of News Editors in Washington.

The challenge to the press and the newly emboldened attacks on Mr. Obama come a day after Mr. Romney swept primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia and appeared to have put himself on firm footing as he pushes to wrap up the Republican presidential nomination.

Mr.

The Republican presidential nomination process hinges today on the choice of Michigan voters.

A traditionally Democratic state (Obama won here by 16 points in 2008 and no Republican presidential candidate has carried the state since 1988), Michigan’s economy has been convulsed by the 2009 failure of automakers General Motors and Chrysler, which punctuated a decades long slide into poverty, crime and blight for the city of Detroit, once a colossus of American capitalism and manufacturing.

And while Michigan is much more than Detroit, Detroit is most of Michigan. The 5.3 million residents of the Detroit Metro area – which includes cities and counties in Detroit’s orbit, like former GM company town Flint and Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan – represent 53 percent of the state’s population.

But the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler and the long slide from the glory days of 40 years ago changed the composition of the Detroit area and the politics of the state.

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that I will sign today -- a plan that meets the principles I laid out in January -- is the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history.” -- President Obama at the Feb. 17, 2009 signing of his stimulus first stimulus package in Denver.

The deteriorating situation in the Middle East may end up making this election an unexpected battle over foreign policy.

Given the new dangers and uncertainties sewn by the Arab Spring last year, particularly the emboldened regime in Iran and the anxiety in Israel, the chances for a regional conflagration are higher now than at any time since U.S. troops, now withdrawn, invaded Iraq in 2003.

That could bring $5 gasoline, economic disruption and a severe testing of old alliances.

In another indication of the difficulty President Obama's reelection campaign faces, only 36 percent of likely voters grade the administration's handling of the economy at good or excellent, according to a new Rasmussen poll.

In a national survey of 1,000 likely voters January 31-February 1, a whopping 62 percent grade the president at fair to poor, with poor collecting the largest number: 45 percent.

Still, Democratic officials say that they see a positive trend built on slightly better unemployment and housing numbers that could end up helping Obama in his reelection.

"We just need six more months," said a top Democratic official.

The polling data, however, shows big problems with men, middle-age and senior voters and Independents...

In a Saturday night debate, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, a former Democratic strategist for former pro-abortion President Bill Clinton, devoted considerable time to questioning the candidates on the issue of contraception.

Although Stephanopoulos was panned heavily by conservative bloggers and reported for devoting so much time to such a non-controversial topic at a time when the American voting public is focused on the economy, the discussion did provide an opportunity for the Republican candidates to present their pro-life views.

During the discussion, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, outlined his opposition to Roe and his support for better judges.

“I don’t believe they decided that correctly. In my view, Roe v. Wade was improperly decided. It was based upon that same principle.

Less than a year before the election, more American voters disapprove than approve of the job President Obama is doing as president -- and almost all view the economy negatively.

Forty-four percent of voters approve and 51 percent disapprove of President Obama’s job performance, according to a Fox News poll released Friday.

Last month, 42 percent approved and 48 percent disapproved. The increase in disapproval is due at least in part to Democrats. The 19 percent of Obama’s party who now disapprove of the job he’s doing matches the previous high (August 2010). The president’s average approval among Democrats for his term so far is 82 percent, and average disapproval is 11 percent.

An overwhelming majority of voters -- 94 percent -- say the economy is in bad shape.