NBC News and the Wall Street Journal are out with the latest presidential poll this morning. Your topline numbers: President Obama 48 percent, Mitt Romney 44 percent.
Those numbers were largely unchanged from the previous month and within the poll’s margin of error. Here’s how the Journal summed things up: “Heading into next week’s Republican convention, Mitt Romney remains within striking distance of President Barack Obama but faces steep challenges in inducing voters to warm up to him as a candidate.”
A few other numbers of note: 32 percent said the country is “headed in the right direction” compared with 61 percent who said its “off on the wrong track” (both of those numbers held more or less constant from last month); 48 percent said they approve of the job Obama is doing compared with 49 percent who said they did not (those numbers flipped from July); 51 percent said that Romney was “out of step with most Americans’ thinking” compared with 44 percent who said the same of Obama; and 22 percent said that Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as a running mate made them more likely to vote for the GOP ticket, while 23 percent said it made them less likely to do so.
You can read the full results here.
