“And as I go across the country and ask women, ‘What can I do to help?’, what they speak about, day in and day out, is, ‘Help me find a good job or a good job for my spouse, and help my kid.  Make sure my children have a bright future.’  Better schools and better job opportunities.  That is what the women of America are concerned about, and the answers are coming from us and not from Barack Obama," he said.

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan had a similar message for supporters at a rally near Cleveland, Ohio. “We saw a president not offer a single idea or a lesson learned from the failures of the last four years.  But what we saw in Governor Mitt Romney was a leader who has the solutions, who has the ideas on how to turn this economy around, how to get people back to work," he said.

Vice President Joe Biden, campaigning in Greeley, Colorado, painted a different picture of Obama. “You all saw the man that I have sat with every day, on average four to six hours a day.  A man of principle, a man of gumption, a man with a steady hand and a clear vision.  That is what America got to see last night," he said.

President Obama’s lead in public opinion surveys has eroded and possibly disappeared after what is widely regarded as a poor performance in the first of the three debates, on October 3.

Journalism professor Alan Schroeder at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts says the president’s better performance in Tuesday’s debate might help him stop the slide. 

“It was a badly needed win for Obama because, of course, he had messed up so badly in the first debate.  And at that point, the positive narrative shifted away from him and onto Mitt Romney.  And so Obama really needed a change of trajectory, just as far as his news coverage went.  I think this debate will give him that," he said.