Obama leads Romney 49-42 percent in latest Reuters/Ipsos survey

President Barack Obama maintains a lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney with 40 days left until the November 6 election, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll said on Thursday. The daily tracking poll said Obama had 49 percent support to 42 percent for Romney among likely voters. Ipsos interviewed 1,194 registered voters online for the survey. The result showed the race basically holding where it has been for days with Obama enjoying an advantage over the former Massachusetts governor. Obama got a bump in support from his Democratic National Convention earlier this month and Romney was hurt by the leak of a video from a private fundraiser he held in May in which he said 47 percent of Americans were dependent on government and unlikely to support him. The Romney campaign argues that its internal data shows that the race is much closer than most polls are showing. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll had a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points for likely voters.