Recent polls show US President Barack Obama and Republican contender Mitt Romney are deadlocked in three key presidential battleground states.
The new NBC-Marist polls were for Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada.
In Iowa, the two rivals are tied at 44 percent among registered voters, including those who are undecided but leaning toward a candidate.
In Colorado, Obama gets support from 46 percent of registered voters, while Romney gets 45 percent.
And in Nevada, the president is at 48 percent and Romney is at 46 percent.
These three states are all battlegrounds that Obama carried in 2008, but George W. Bush won in 2004.
Results from NBC-Marist polling in three other battleground states last week – Florida, Ohio and Virginia – showed Obama with marginal leads in each state.
While America's struggling economy is a key issue in the 2012 presidential elections, voters do not clearly favor Obama or Romney in fiscal matters.
Nor is foreign policy proving a decisive tipping point between Romney and Obama for voters.
While Romney has sought to portray Obama as a feckless leader who has failed to lead the world, he has not staked out decisively different policy decisions.
The primary difference between Obama and Romney on leading international issues – Afghanistan, China, Israel, Russia, and Syria – is the strength of their rhetoric.
If Romney doesn't risk taking clear, decisive policy positions for America's global agenda that differ from Obama's status quo, then foreign policy won't make a critical difference.
However, religion could prove a decisive wildcard able to upset either candidate's hopes on election day.
Conservative Christians – who comprise one of the Republican party's most reliable voting blocks – have expressed discomfort over Romney's Mormon faith.
But, while religion has dogged Romney less in this election than it did in 2008, its not clear he can inspire the evangelicals who so strongly backed Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman to come out in force on election day.
Meanwhile, Latinos strongly favor Obama due to his backing of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but may be torn by religious loyalties as well.
Some 62 percent of Latinos identify as Catholics, and they will be watching as the church hierarchy sues the Obama administration over health insurance coverage for birth control.
Obama's recent backing of gay marriage could also cost him votes among religiously conservative Latinos.