Poll: Obama holds lead among Hispanic voters

>>> mitt romney spoke today to the latino coalition. it's a non-profit small business group in washington. but a new nbc news " wall street journal " telemundo poll of respondents sos that romney has a lot of catching up to do with this key voting bloc . president obama holds a giants 34-point lead. latinos are more optimistic about the economy. though overall our poll show big doubts remain from the economy. nbc news chief white house correspondent and political director chuck todd , host of the daily rundown and political analyst charlie cook , editor and publisher of the cook political report . in the a surprise, the latino margin. or is this large a margin a surprise at all to you, chuck, first?

>> it's not a surprise. it's what we've seen over the last year in tracking this data. this is a larger sample than we've done before. and our partners at telemundo, we're going to be doing this every month adding this since it's becoming a crucial voting bloc potentially swinging a few swing states back and forth. you got to watch the romney number here. he cannot be much below 35. when you start looking at the numbers because that really puts states -- you can have -- he could win every election argument he wants but then demographics could cost him colorado, nevada.

>> new mexico.

>> put -- never mind new mexico. but even a florida, virginia, north carolina , all three states showed enormous growth among hispanics in the census. one other thing about this hispanic poll. you pointed out the optimism that's there. much more optimistic than our poll overall. but only about half of them see themselves as voters. this was not a -- this was not a group of voters saying they're enthusiastic or ready to engage in the political process yet.

>> charlie cook , what about the pes six overall about the economy we see in this poll?

>> i this i there's an enormous amount of concern. i think as the focus gets more and more over the political uncertainty in washington and the physical cliff at the end of this year, i think it's going to add sort of add more gloomy clouds onto the horizon. the president needs the economy to bounce back pretty strongly between now and november 6th . there are a lot of signs that sort of not happening. we're probably going to see the gdp figures revised from 2.2 down to 177 or 1.8. that's not going to go over when when people say it's not even going as well as we'd like. i thought the polls showed just a lot of reasons why this thing is going to be just razr tight. and you know what the president needs to pull away i didn't see a lot of evidence of that in the poll. even on the hispanic side. the president got 67% of the vote last time. and he's looking at 61% in this poll. undecideds typically don't break towards incumbents. and as chuck said, are they going to turn out. i don't see the intensity whether you're looking at hispanics, whether you're looking at 1 to 29-year-olds. i'm assuming the african-american community turns out, but the key legs of that stool of 2008 i don't see the intensity there this time.

>> one of the other legs of the stool are women . what about the gender gap ? it certainly is consistent here. it shows again that previous pillows, "the new york times" poll was an outlier of the gender gap . in particular, where are the present president's strengths among women ?

>> there's a huge gap. sometimes i think we forget this gap and don't talk about it among married women and single women . married women it's more competitive between the two votes, very much a swing vote versus single women and single men, as well. where it's an enormous advantage for democrats usually overall but including the president here. but it was interesting to see that mitt romney was doing better among suburban married women . that's probably as much of a swing vote as any. now again, all of these when we are looking at gender gaps they have high errors and could fluctuate more so than our standard fluctuate more so than the standard number there, but that's where romney has to make in roads when we talk about the gender gp. it is not men versus women . it is suburban women .

>> off other things that's disappointing to say the least in the poll for those of us that like to see things get done, is the question about do you want a president who shows conviction or do you want a president willing to reach compromise and consensus on issues? let me ask both of you what this question and this answer means to you, charlie.

>> i am trying to read it, 38% that seem common ground .

>> 56% wanting who will just stand firm.

>> i just wonder whether that's one of these questions where the wording of the question can send it off in opposite directions. if you said standing your ground even if it means things don't get accomplished, that would change it enormously. i think that's one of these things where you can come up with a lot of different results by just shifting a couple words here or there.

>> chuck, the wording?

>> andrea, i just add, i think that we just want our presidents to be of spine. there is an expectation that the president is the lone chief, the chief executive, so i think there is an expectation of that more so, so i wonder how much that is. because when you ask about their own representative, that's a different story. if you ask it that way. i think there is something about the office of the presidency that also says, no, you're supposed to not guy that stands firm, the steel spine.

>> remember ronald reagan saying that sound you are hearing around his feet when he signed a tax bill was the cement breaking. sometimes you have