Latest National Election Polls 2012: Romney Down in Gallup Poll; Is Obama Catching Up?

In today's look at the national polls, it seems like Republican challenger Mitt Romney's ascension may finally be stalling out.

Of course, he's already flying high, so it may be a while before he falls back down to earth.

The daily Gallup tracking poll still puts Romney in the lead by more than the margin of error, though down a point from yesterday. Romney is 6 points ahead of Obama nationally, 51 percent to 45 percent. Obama's numbers are unchanged from yesterday, but support for Romney fell a point.

The Rasmussen tracking poll shows a dead heat between the presidential candidates, 48 percent even.

And a nationwide survey by the Hartford Courant and the University of Connecticut gives Obama a 3-point lead, 48 percent to 45 percent for Romney.

The Gallup and Rasmussen polls are aggregates of data over the last few days. In the case of the Gallup poll, it is a compilation of a week's worth of data.

Since Romney's support was so high this past week, the new data gleaned yesterday for today's report must have been quite a bit lower than 6 points in Romney's favor.

Since the Rasmussen poll is a tie, and that firm uses a robo-calling system that tends to skew more conservative, it is likely that Obama is making a comeback after the second presidential debate on Tuesday night.

The Rasmussen poll is now two-thirds post-debate data, and tomorrow it will be entirely comprised of interviews from after the second presidential debate.

While the Gallup poll has showed Romney ahead for almost two weeks now, most other national polls show a much tighter race between the two candidates, even those that tend to skew Republican, which the Gallup poll doesn't.

However, the Gallup poll does tend to skew extreme. Its past performance has tended to exaggerate leads in both directions, as when it predicted Obama would beat John McCain in 2008 by a much larger margin than he did.

It is also historically very swingy, even though the rolling average tends to smooth out spikes.

But the Gallup poll isn't the only one with potential issues. The Hartford Courant poll, while it surveyed a good number of respondents, polled quite a few more Democrats than Republicans, which may explain Obama's lead in that poll.

Taken together, it's likely that the race is a dead heat, just like Rasmussen and yesterday's IBD/TIPP poll state.

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