All Things Considered on WFAE

As this long election comes to end, Superstorm Sandy is offering a chance for President Obama to showcase his leadership skills one last time.

For Obama, this campaign has truly been a fight against the elements: a painfully slow economic recovery and a political landscape in which the Republicans swept the table just two years ago. The Obama campaign, with its trademark discipline and meticulous organization, set out to overcome these obstacles.

But the long campaign has also put the spotlight on features of Obama's own personality and performance.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

In lower Manhattan, the New York Stock Exchange was closed yesterday. It's closed again today, slated to reopen tomorrow. More on that coming up. But Wall Street is not the only industry in lower Manhattan facing trouble from the hurricane.

Zoe Chace of NPR's Planet Money team has been getting a look around.

New York City has seen some of the worst damage from Sandy. Large parts of Manhattan were without power on Monday night, a building crane was knocked loose, and there were reports of flooding in the city's subway system.

Robert Siegel talks with Associated Press correspondent Katie Zezima, who was in Atlantic City, N.J., close to where Sandy made landfall.

Sandy hit the East Coast on Monday and knocked out power for millions of people. Utility companies face major challenges to get power back online after the massive storm.

A poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center shows that President Obama has failed to regain much of the support he lost in the days after the first presidential debate.

The poll shows that among likely voters, the race is now a statistical dead heat with both Obama and Mitt Romney receiving 47 percent support. Among registered voters there is what Pew calls a "statistically insignificant two-point edge" of 47 percent to 45 percent for Obama.