Obama gets boost from early voting

>>> moving on to a victory for the obama campaign on early voting in ohio. a federal appeals court in the buckeye start reinstated early voten ot final three days before election day meaning that people in the key battleground can continue to cast ballots depending on the decision of their local board of elections. the obama camp filed that lawsuit arguing that everyone should have a chance to vote on those days.

>>> nbc news senior political director mark murray joins me. a very good morning to you.

>> good morning.

>> how important is the court decision that clears the way for the last three days of early voting in november?

>> very important for the obama campaign in this ground game. they've actually used early voting as a way to be able to get all of their sure supporters in these states that already conducted early voting . so ohio is a state that's early voting . they started doing that on october 2nd . the battleground state of iowa is also an early voting state, and you've actually seen president obama , his campaign surrogates, when they campaign in these early voting states, urging people, one, to be able to register, make sure they're registered and also vote early. banking all the sure obama votes to concentrate on the swing voters and the undecideds closer to election day .

>> yeah. earlier in the week, the pennsylvania judge ruling that voter i.d. rules, they can't be imment impleme implemented. how does that affect another key state?

>> people were worried the pennsylvania voter i.d. law could make the pennsylvania contest a little closer than the polls subject. right now president obama in most polls in the keystone state is up in high double digits. this could disproportion knitly affect minorities and others seen to be democratic voters, could end up hurting them, but this ruling that the pennsylvania voter i.d. law essentially will not be the law for 2012 pretty much eliminates a lot of democratic worries that that law could end up making the race closer than it currently appears in the polls.

>> i want to know if you see a big difference in 24 hours , because with the debate fallout, may be blunted by the job numbers. people were talking about thursday morning, then friday morning, and getting an early indication of how the debate may have played out in the swing states ?

>> we're still looking for good polls. right now it's probably best to see the swing state polls that come out monday, tuesday, wednesday. at that point we'll have a good idea after people have digested the debate as well as these job number, but alex, i think you pointed to it very well. the obama campaign got a very big gift from the job number, just to be able to turn the subject from wednesday night's tough debate into something that was seen as a positive, that the unemployment rate went below 8% and just change the story. allows them to move on to thursday's debate between joe biden and paul ryan as well as the remaining two debates between president obama and mitt romney .

>> in terms of thursday's debate, did the president's performance at all during that make the vp debate more vitticcal? critical?

>> increased pressure on joe biden . for democrats to get in a very good performance and you ent up looking, paul rye sn a very well-spoken person, although this is going to be his first debate on a stage like this. joe biden has done this many times before. he actually might have a little advantage. as we all know sometimes joe biden is saying things that actually draw attention. so i do think that this is going to be a must-see debate for the country, and, of course, the obama campaign is hoping for a little better performance.

>> very gracious way to talk about things that the vice president said in the past. mark murray , thank you very