2012 Presidential Election | featured news

Unemployment rates fell or held steady last month in nine key swing states at the center of this year's presidential election. Rates dropped in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and North Carolina. They were unchanged in New Hampshire and Virginia.

With the nation mired in two wars and amid an economic meltdown, we endorsed a largely untested young senator from Illinois for president in 2008. Four years later, the Iraq war is over, the war in Afghanistan has a conclusion in sight, and the economy has made demonstrable — though hardly remarkable — progress.

Only in America. In the grubby world of the campaign yesterday, there was no let-up as supporters and surrogates kept the bitter battle going. But inside the grace-filled glitter palace of the Waldorf-Astoria last night, President Obama and Mitt Romney shared a stage, a meal and stood united in homage to the eternal values of a singular nation.

Mitt Romney is showing confidence about his standing in North Carolina and shifting campaign staff to other battleground states. "With the increasingly widening polls in North Carolina, we will continue to allocate resources, including key senior staff, to other states," Romney spokesman Michael Levoff told The News & Observer in Raleigh.

Rock stars of politics and music, respectively, former President Bill Clinton and Bruce Springsteen joined forces here Thursday afternoon for President Barack Obama. Each stuck to his specialty.

"There are some problems with this binder," complains Ruth from New Hampshire. "First, there are no women in it." A remark made by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during Tuesday's debate brought us a meme that just keeps on giving.

Here in a county that knows a thing or two about Election Day meltdowns, both parties are fretting over what might go seriously wrong before, during or just after the Nov. 6 presidential election....

Ah, the challenges of hearing President Obama call your dad liar. Makes you want to punch the guy, right? Tagg Romney, the eldest son of the GOP presidential nominee, joked on a North Carolina radio station that he wanted to jump out of his seat at Tuesday's debate and "take a swing" at Obama as the president repeatedly called out Mitt Romney.

President Obama touts antidiscrimination legislation and attacks Mitt Romney for targeting Planned Parenthood, while Romney says women have suffered under Obama... Picking up where their contentious debate left off, President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney battled Wednesday for the support of female voters, underscoring their potentially decisive role in settling the fiercely competitive race.