Above is pollster.com aggregate without Rasmussen and Gallup. See explanation.
Above is Rasmussen and Gallup alone. "All polls included" is here.
WSJ:
Mr. Romney's choice of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate has stirred excitement within the GOP that he can defeat the president. But the poll found little evidence the pick will affect the election, beyond helping unify Mr. Romney's conservative base.
Mr. Obama's lead over Mr. Romney was 48% to 44% in the new poll, about the same as a month earlier and within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.
Most troubling result in NBC/WSJ poll for Romney: Obama 22 pt adv on "cares about avg people." For Obama: only 31% say they're better off
— @chucktodd via Twitter for BlackBerry®
NY Times:
Representative Todd Akin said definitively Tuesday that he would not step aside. After his comments on rape, fellow Republicans, including Mitt Romney, asked him to drop out of the Missouri Senate race.
Politico:
Rep. Todd Akin told Mitt Romney to mind his own business Tuesday, accusing the presumptive GOP nominee of “making a bigger deal” than necessary out of Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape.”
Dana Milbank:
A boozy frolic at a Christian holy site might have been a considerable embarrassment for the party, but it was eclipsed by a bigger one: Akin’s preposterous claim on a St. Louis TV program that pregnancy is rare after a “legitimate rape” because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Republican leaders spent the next 48 hours trying to shut Akin’s whole thing down, but after a period of panic (a no-show on Piers Morgan’s show led the CNN host to show his empty chair and call him a “gutless little twerp”), Akin told radio host Mike Huckabee on Tuesday that he would fight the “big party people” and stay in the race.
Matthew Dowd:
But where were these same Republican leaders in 2008 when Sarah Palin created the same scenario with her outrageous comments? I didn’t see any of them asking John McCain to drop her from the ticket. There were no calls for her to be replaced on the ballot.
...
Make no mistake, the calls for Akin’s resignation likely had nothing to do with the substance of his remarks -- keep in mind, the Republican platform has a call for a ban on abortion even in cases of rape. They had nothing to do with the fact that Akin has long held out-of-the-mainstream positions on many issues and made numerous extremely conservative statements. Akin’s mistake was that by opening his mouth with crazy talk -- as my nine-year old daughter says -- made it much harder for Republicans to win a sure Senate seat pickup with him on the ballot.
NY Times:
If Mr. Romney were to reject the party’s tough abortion plank, it would send a politically difficult message to conservatives about how Mr. Romney might govern once he got into the White House.
There could also be a flurry of conservative outrage at the convention, which could distract from the carefully choreographed event Mr. Romney’s strategists are planning.
But Mr. Romney’s campaign is also trying hard to make sure that the convention projects an image that swing voters in battleground states will find appealing. Aides did not expect to be focusing heavily on the party’s abortion positions this week.
Matt Miller:
Wealthy political candidates are nothing new, of course. But we’ve never had two wealthy candidates on a national ticket whose top priority is to reduce already low taxes on the well-to-do while raising taxes on everyone else — even as they propose to slash programs that serve the poor, or that (like college aid) create chances for the lowly born to rise.
Call them the Drawbridge Republicans. As the moniker implies, these are wealthy Republicans who have no qualms about pulling up the drawbridge behind them. Such sentiments used to be reserved for the political fringe.
National Journal:
Even before his now-infamous comments on rape, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., presented Senate Republican leaders with a familiar problem. In O’Donnell, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and Ken Buck in Colorado, the 2010 Republican primaries and accompanying grassroots support foisted upon the national party aggressively conservative candidates whose candidacies Republican strategists believe cost them those races and a shot at Senate control.
The difference this time is the speed, intensity, and coordination with which GOP leaders have moved to push Akin out of the race against Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and Senate Republican leaders closely coordinated responses Monday, setting the tone for their party.
Kathleen Parker:
Akin's gift to Democrats wasn't just a probable campaign killer for him personally. It also reminded critics that Akin once co-sponsored legislation with Paul Ryan redefining rape as "forcible" versus, what, voluntary? To be fair, there is a difference between morning-after remorse that some call "rape" and rape as most understand it. But for these purposes, as President Barack Obama said, "Rape is rape." Does a raped woman need bruises to qualify for an abortion?
Whether mandating transvaginal probes prior to abortion under "informed consent" logic or misunderstanding basic biology, Republicans have managed to alienate a fair portion of the female population. Even pro-life women will have a hard time standing by men who are so willfully ignorant.