Obama dodges jobs data time bomb

But all the president’s leads were within the margin of error, lending some credence to the Romney camp’s belief that many of Obama’s 2008 voters will not show up and that the intensity of Republican voters will be decisive.

Romney’s team believes he is well placed after a flurry of polls showing him doing better than Obama among independent voters, but Obama got a boost with that bloc on Thursday with the endorsement of New York mayor and popular independent politician Michael Bloomberg.

Obama on Thursday appeared on the campaign trail for the first time since Sandy roared ashore on Monday with hurricane force winds and murderous flood tides along the northeast coast, killing at least 92 people.

He leapt at the opportunity to showcase his leadership skills during the storm as he marshalled the federal government’s emergency response effort.

The president toned down some of the raw partisanship of his electoral message, but moved to stop Romney appropriating the change mantle he used to win the White House in 2008.

“Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up these very same policies that failed our country so badly, the very same policies we’ve been cleaning up after for the past four years – and he is offering them up as change,” Obama said Thursday.

“What the governor is offering sure ain’t change. Getting more power back to the biggest banks isn’t change. Leaving millions without health insurance isn’t change.”

Romney, struggling to recapture the initiative after being sidelined by Sandy, made three stops in battleground Virginia, where he sought to refocus the race on his strongest argument: the listless economy.

“I know the Obama folks are chanting ‘four more years,’” Romney told supporters in Roanoke, Virginia. “But our chant is this: ‘Five more days!’”

With Romney’s team confident it can score at least a few upset victories in Democrat-leaning states, his campaign said the Republican would stump for votes in Pennsylvania on Sunday, just 48 hours before election day.

Pennsylvania has been in Obama’s column for months, with the latest Real Clear Politics average of polls showing the incumbent up 4.6 percentage points in the large, eastern state.

But Romney aides dismiss polls as giving an incomplete picture in many states where they feel the challenger has built recent momentum that could deliver a stronger-than-expected turnout.

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