Mara Liasson
Both the Obama and Romney campaigns said they pulled all their political ads today in observance of the September 11th anniversary. But politics wasn't very far offstage. The Obama campaign sees foreign policy as an advantage this year.Collection: Anniversary
While Romney has an overall deficit with women voters, his biggest disadvantage is with college educated women - wherever they work, at home, in an office, a store or a factory.
Until he announced his immigration policy last week, Obama had the support of most Hispanic voters - but not the enthusiasm they had shown for him in 2008. That may be changing in part because of the decision not to deport young immigrants whose undocumented parents brought them here as children.
Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions - racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the 'Law Review.'
Obama's even keel sometimes comes across as aloof or even cold.
The president is under 50 percent approval ratings in all the battleground states. So, you could say that President Obama is defying gravity by still being in a dead heat with Mitt Romney. And one of the reasons that he is, is because the changing face of the electorate are giving him a small boost.
Romney still enjoys the Republicans' traditional advantage among voters who are veterans, but the Obama campaign is confident it can chip away at that.
As one conservative intellectual said to me - he said if the choice is between [Joseph] Stalin and [Adolf] Hitler, I'd pick Stalin, meaning Ted Cruz because he's more predictable. So there's real civil war inside the Republican Party.Collection: Real
Democrats came into the race with a structural advantage in the Electoral College. Their big blue wall - the states that Democrats have won in the past six presidential elections - gave [Hillary] Clinton a strong base to build on.Collection: Strong
Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions - racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the 'Law Review.Collection: School
Donald Trump is a candidate who divided his own party more deeply than any presidential candidate has before.Collection: Party
[Donald Trump ] would make history in so many ways because he is a candidate who eschewed the traditional arts of political campaigns, including field organization, traditional advertising, debate preparation and policy knowledge.Collection: Art
If Donald Trump wins, it will be a seismic event.Collection: Winning
Hillary Clinton has had a small but persistent lead since June - anywhere from 2 to 5 points. The stock markets and the election betting pools are predicting a Clinton win.Collection: Winning
Yes, the presidential race is very close, and some public polls show it getting closer as we go into the final hours, but in one sense it's actually been stable for months.Collection: Race
The establishment is divorcing itself from its base - from voters who are choosing a candidate who says he stands for things that are anathema to the establishment.Collection: Voters
The base has chosen or is choosing a candidate that the establishment says is absolutely unacceptable. And what that means is this marriage of an elite, big business-backed establishment and a blue-collar, downwardly mobile base has really come to a divorce.Collection: Mean
Well, it's possible that the new infusion of ad money against Donald Trump kept his margins in Kentucky and Louisiana down a bit. But we're also seeing something that we've never seen in 100 years, which is we are seeing the crackup of a major American political party.Collection: Party
Well, we had a bunch of primaries and caucuses on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders won the Nebraska and Kansas caucuses. That keeps his campaign alive. But Hillary Clinton won Louisiana, which was the big prize of the night, so she ended up winning more delegates than he did yesterday.Collection: Winning
Republican voters are coalescing behind [Donald] Trump, but many Republican elected officials still say they can't support him.Collection: Support
If [Hillary] Clinton wins, history will also be made: She would be the first female U.S. president, of course, but also the only candidate in the modern era, other than George H.W. Bush, who managed to follow a two-term president of her own party.Collection: Party
The winner's margin of victory also matters. If it's a squeaker, that will make the lessons learned for both parties much murkier.Collection: Party
If [Hillary] Clinton can come close in those two traditionally red states, it will be because of the diverse, educated populations around Atlanta and Phoenix. And it will be a sign that Arizona and Georgia are on their way to becoming the new battleground states.Collection: Atlanta
As those states and others in the South and West become more diverse and educated, they will become harder for the Republican Party - in its current form - to win.Collection: Party
Meanwhile, there are some traditional battleground states - like Ohio and Iowa - that are becoming older, whiter and less educated. That's turning them from true battlegrounds into more reliable red states.Collection: Iowa
Even if [Donald] Trump concedes, some of his supporters have promised to take up arms against [Hillary] Clinton.Collection: Arms
White voters were 72 percent of the electorate in 2012, and their share of the population has shrunk a couple points since then. [Donald] Trump has had trouble winning certain segments of the white vote, such as suburban women and college-educated voters.Collection: Couple
Republican candidates have won whites with college degrees in every presidential election since polling began.Collection: College
This year [2016], however, polls show [Hillary] Clinton winning white college-educated voters by double digits.Collection: Winning
[Hillary] Clinton has also struggled with key groups of voters.Collection: Keys
If the Congress is going to spend its whole time hauling up regulators and bureaucrats and looking like they're focusing on tiny, trivial things, instead of jobs and the economy, it could be a problem for them.Collection: Jobs
The Senate is the big prize. Until recently, Democrats felt confident they could get the four seats they needed to take back control if [Hillary] Clinton is in the White House and Vice President Tim Kaine held the tie-breaking vote.Collection: White
Senate races have tightened along with the presidential race. Watch to see how many Republican Senate candidates outperform Donald Trump - and how many hang on to their seats in states that he loses.Collection: Race
If Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania wins, for instance, it will tell Republicans that their own brand hasn't been hurt too badly by [Donald] Trump's negatives.Collection: Hurt
If [Donald] Trump drags down a bunch of Senate Republicans, the post-election GOP assessment will be much more pessimistic.Collection: Assessment
No one is predicting that the Democrats will get the 30 pickups they need to take back the House majority.Collection: House
[Mike] Bloomberg aides says he's more likely to run if it's [Donald]Trump or [Ted] Cruz versus Sanders, then there would, presumably, be space in the middle for him. But he's less likely to go if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.Collection: Running
Hillary Clinton is also not a very exciting, inspiring candidate to a lot of the left-leaning Democratic base, especially in Iowa.Collection: Iowa
As one person said to me , Republicans know [Donald] Trump is a stain on their party.Collection: Party
After months and months at the top of the polls, there is a real possibility that Donald Trump could be the nominee.Collection: Real
For a long time, many Republicans thought if they just took two aspirin and laid down, [Donald] Trump would go away.Collection: Two
Many people feel he did cross a line in a way he hadn't even done before and also that Republicans had to speak out because they believe Trump poses a danger to the party.Collection: Party
There's disgust with what people called a broken political system, and they're really angry at elites, whether it's the Republican establishment or particularly the media who they feel look down on them, tell them they're bigots.Collection: Media
For Democrats, anything less than 15 net pickups will be a disappointing outcome [in presidency race].Collection: Race
Donald Trump has said he wants to keep Medicare and Social Security the way they are. Congressman Price along with most Republicans are on record supporting voucherizing Medicare. So there are going to be some conflicts to resolve there.Collection: Records
The enthusiasm for [Donald] Trump had gone up. The net result was it made people more supportive of him.Collection: People
Jeb Bush was supposed to be the establishment candidate, but he didn't catch on. And the extraordinary thing about this Republican primary is that the establishment, moderate wing of the party has sidelined itself. They're not coalescing around one candidate as they have in the past.Collection: Party
I think that's why we see this mixed reaction - Republican congressional leaders like Paul Ryan speaking out very firmly, but Republican candidates not as much, with the exception of the candidates in the single digits like Jeb Bush or Lindsey Graham, who said how to make America great again tell - Donald Trump to go to hell.Collection: Thinking
People like Ted Cruz, who has tried to position himself as the best second choice for [Donald] Trump supporters, wouldn't condemn him.Collection: People
Michael Rubio said Trump's plan was impulsive and not well thought out. The other thing that's really annoying Republicans is that this was supposed to be their great week. The president gave a speech on terrorism that was not well received. They were working hard to tie Hillary Clinton to the president. Then along comes Donald Trump, and the story changes dramatically.Collection: Ties