Poll: Obama’s lead with women voters shrinking

>> president obama takes a jab at republican richard muourdock's recent remarks and critical female votersment joining me is jen saki.

>> good news for you as i showered this morning after two days on the plane.

>> this time around, it seems like you guys are taking a page out of the bush '04 playbook and trying to push these wedge issues, trying to get out your base. let's look at the gender gap problems you're having. it narrowed. in nevada and colorado from our new nbc news/marist poll, in september your victory with women over mitt romney was 14 points in nevada . 16 points in nevada . 14 in colorado . now down to 6 in nevada and 7 in colorado . why is this tightening too much?

>> well, we know there are polls every hour. we don't buy into every poll. the important thing about the clip you just played is that this is a fundamental difference in this race. president obama as you saw heard him say believes women should make their own choices. doesn't mean we should defund planned parenthood . this issue this with with mr. mourdock reminded women at what's at stake. it's perplexing to us for days the romney campaign has gone into hiding to avoid answering questions because mitt romney is up on the air with an ad for this candidate. but it's really about the larger issue of women 's health. this is a very big issue in a state like colorado . you know, women care very deeply about this across the country but especially there and something we'll continue to talk about and we expect, you know, this race is going to be very, very close to the end. but we know that women voters when they're paying attention to the issues and know what's at stake and an opportunity to talk about it, the choice will be clear to them.

>> is it fair to say when you have such a large debt, $16 trillion debt, you have wars abroad, you have a lot of folks have a ton of economic anxiety here your message in the last ten days of the campaign seems to be about women 's health. this is really trying to turn out the base.

>> no, look, this is an issue the president talks about. he couldn't hold himself back from speaking to this given how outrageous the comments were but 99% of what the president talks about every single day is what he's done to help bring this economy back from the brink of collapse and what he wants to do moving forward. he's been waving around his plan that he's been talking about since the convention, he's talked about continuing to create manufacturing jobs, increasing oil imports, winding down our war in afghanistan . this race is about the economy, that's what he talks about every day. but, look, there are issues that perk women 's ears across this country and the comments of somebody like mr. mourdock and the lack of response from the romney team, i think that wakes people up.

>> let's talk about another issue the president is having where numbers have tightened immensely with the white voters. recent "the washington post " poll said this, "nearly half of all those who supported obama in 2008 but now say they back romney are white independents." overall, whites make up more than 90% of such vote switchers." why such a fall from grace from president obama amongst this voting bloc ? well, we certainly don't look at it as a fall from grace . as i said before, there are lots of polls out there. you look at a state like ohio which i think everybody thinks is a pretty pivotal state in this election. that's a place where the president's message and the president's record of saving the auto industry continuing to fight for manufacturing, you know, really resonates with working voters, white voters, african-american voters, latino voters. you know, we're not looking at this as a breakdown of their every demographic group and have to be where we were in 2008 but a different year than in 2008 . it's been through a tough time. all we want to do is get to 270 electoral vote .

>> can you winning 38% of the white vote nationally?

>> look, i'm not going to break down all the specific numbers. you know we all look at them, but our goal is looking at the 6 to 9 states in play, how we're going to get across --

>> it's 38 tear to say --

>> there's lots of polls out there, luke. but state to state. different things going on. different dynamics. at the end of the day when you look at a manufacturing base, working base like states in ohio and wisconsin and iowa, those are places where the president's message is really resonating. that's what we're focused on.

>> jen psaki from the obama