After several days of mixed results from the national polls, some slightly better news for Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
His lead in the Gallup daily tracking poll holds steady, with Romney still up 3 points over President Obama, 50 percent to 47 percent.
But Obama gained a point in the Rasmussen tracking poll, though he still trails Romney by 3 points, 50 percent to 47 percent.
Obama also falls a point in the IBD/TIPP poll, leaving him two points ahead of Romney, 47 percent to 45 percent.
And this month's Associated Press/GfK poll released Thursday reverses last month's Obama lead. Romney now has a 2-point lead over the president, 47 percent to 45 percent.
However, now that the Gallup poll has fallen to within the margin of error, all of these polls are statistical ties.
Still, the trend is slightly in Romney's favor, though the large strides we saw him make after the first presidential debate are definitely over.
Romney gained a little less than 5 points in the national polls over the two weeks after the first debate. He's lost about a point of that bounce, but it was enough for him to catch up to and overtake Obama.
Now the two appear to have settled into a dead heat.
While Romney has a slight edge in national polls, Obama is slightly ahead in most of the important swing states.
An Electoral College/popular vote split is possible, but it's not likely, though it did happen as recently as 2000, when George W. Bush won Florida and the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Al Gore.
That didn't do Gore any good, though, and if it comes to that this year, it will be small consolation for Romney.
The small post-debate bounce I predicted for Obama has yet to materialize, so perhaps the two candidates will remain locked in this struggle until Election Day, a scant 12 days off.
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