President Obama and his party shattered the election cycle’s fund-raising record with a $181 million t0tal for September, the announcement offered a jolt of good news for Mr. Obama’s supporters in the wake of a lackluster debate performance on Wednesday that left many of them worried.
Meanwhile, The Mitt Romney on display this week was looser and more relaxed, offering a counter to his reputation as a data-driven technocrat.
Facing off against President Obama in Denver, Mr. Romney had been the candidate his aides had longed to see all year: funny (joking about the “romantic” evening he and Mr. Obama were spending on the president’s 20th wedding anniversary), commanding (challenging Mr. Obama on taxes and government spending) and even warm (placing his right hand over his heart at the end of the debate, in an homage to his supporters in the crowd).
On Friday night, at a rally here, his campaign seemed determined not to let that more emotive, three-dimensional Mitt Romney slip away. Before the crowd of several thousand, Mr. Romney shared stories of friends who had died.
Perhaps his most moving anecdote — about David Oparowski, a 14-year-old boy with leukemia to whom Mr. Romney had ministered — first made an appearance at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, when David’s parents talked about how Mr. Romney had tended to their son, a member of his church ward in Belmont, Mass. But Mr. Romney had never before mentioned the experience on the stump. Mr. Romney recounted how, as he sat in David’s hospital room, the teenager called him “Brother Romney” and asked him about “what’s next.”
“I talked to him about what I believe is next,” said Mr. Romney, recalling that a few days later he got a call from David asking if he would help write his will.
“So I went to David’s bedside and got a piece of legal paper, made it look very official,” he continued. “And then David proceeded to tell me what he wanted to give his friends. Talked about his fishing rod, and who would get that. He talked about his skateboard, who’d get that. And his rifle, that went to his brother.”
He concluded: “I loved that young man.”
Mitt Romney continues to show improved numbers in polls published since the presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday and has now made clear gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. The forecast gives him roughly a 20 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, up from about 15 percent before the debate. Mr. Romney’s gains in the polls have been sharp enough that he should continue to advance in the FiveThirtyEight forecast if he can maintain his numbers over the next couple of days.
Mr. Romney gained two points in the Gallup tracking poll, which now shows him down by three. He also gained roughly 1.5 percentage points in the RAND Corporation’s online tracking poll, reversing a gain that Mr. Obama had made on Friday. And a companion pair of polls published by Clarus Research Group just before and after the debate showed a five-point swing toward Mr. Romney. He trailed Mr. Obama by four points in a poll that Clarus Research Group conducted on Tuesday night, before the debate, but led him by one point in a poll they conducted on Thursday.