A recent NBC/WSJ national poll reported that Barack Obama is beating Mitt Romney 47-44, but is doing even better in the key swing states, where 50 percent of respondents said they’d vote for him, compared to just 42 percent for Romney. (Record levels of support among Latinos, obviously, doesn’t hurt.)

But how does he fare in a state by state breakdown? We looked at some other recent numbers to see how Obama’s is doing in the places that will decide the election.

Ohio

According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, Obama is winning Ohio 47 to 38, while another recent poll showed him up by 3. Other polls are mixed, but Obama is definitely in the lead.

Pennsylvania

Rick Santorum would have no shot in his home state. Quinnipiac shows Obama up by 6. No other polls contradict these numbers.

Florida

Republican Governor Rick Scott is not well-liked, and recent polling from Quinnipiac shows Obama up by four, an incredible swing over the past month in a state where Romney previously was more popular. The data is still mixed — definitely a toss-up.

North Carolina

Both Republican and Democratic pollsters show Romney with a very slight lead. Will the Democratic convention later in the year change the race?

Virginia

With the help of former Governor and DNC Chairman Tim Kaine, who is now running for Senate, Obama may be able to easily lock up a state that he won in 2008.

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Warren Buffett won’t plow his billions into any Super PACs.

Women and minorities continue to make up the federal government.

Other states figure out the impact of the Arizona decision.

How the Obama Administration completely ignored Richard Holbrooke.

The military wants all that money that went to healthcare.

Democrats should fight back hard if Obamacare is overturned.

Recreational gun users spark wildfires across Utah.

Gas prices fall, but confidence does not return.

Rupert Murdoch is unhappy with Mitt Romney — or at least that’s what the most recent tweets from his iPad indicate.

Businessmen don’t make good presidents.

How Obamacare will change healthcare even if it’s overturned?

The inside story of how we blew the Afghanistan surge.

The method (and the madness) behind Anonymous.

The Court sounds a lot like Scott Walker.

The Florida county that could swing the election.

How to run a flagship university into the ground, continued.

National weed market? Uruguay may start selling marijuana to stop the spread of the cocaine trade.

Yep, more proof that Bain invested in companies that efficiently shipped jobs overseas.

Voters are tuning out this campaign cycle because … well, there are many reasons.

Democratic donors: Nope, we still aren’t totally comfortable with the Obama Super PAC.

If the Eurozone falls apart, the world’s poorest countries will suffer even more.

Sandusky’s adopted son steps out of the shadows.

Air conditioning: The great cause of global warming.

The greatest campus fight in America re-ignites.

Is Ben Bernanke guaranteeing a recession?

U.S. and Britain consider giving Syrian dictator Assad immunity .. if he lets go of power.

The long-running battle between Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and the Republicans in congress who think a cover-up related to the “Fast and Furious” scandal — where undercover U.S. agents lost automatic weapons they had sold to Mexican cartels — could take down the administration heated up today, as the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines to hold Holder in contempt.

Holder had refused to cooperate with a subpeona issued by committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has been trying to blow up the scandal’s profile since Republicans won back the house. The White House has pointed out that the Justice Department has cooperated with many investigations related to the scandal, and it was the previous administration that authorized the program. “The problem of gunwalking was a field-driven tactic that dated back to the previous Administration, and it was this Administration’s Attorney General who ended it. In fact, the Justice Department has spent the past fourteen months accommodating Congressional investigators, producing 7,600 pages of documents, and testifying at eleven Congressional hearings,” a White House spokesman said in an emailed statement to Politico. “Yet, Republicans insist on moving forward with an effort that Republicans and objective legal experts have noted is purely political.”

Holder is likely to survive a 23-17 party line vote at least until after the election, when it was already expected that he’d leave. The bigger news is buried in the nature of the White House’s response: They invoked executive priviliege in refusing to hand over the documents related to the scandal, basically saying that Congress had no constitutional reason to look at what happened. Democrats explained why they believed it was still OK to consider the administration transparent:

“I treat assertions of executive privilege very seriously, and I believe they should be used only sparingly,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the panel’s ranking Democrat. “In this case, it seems clear that the administration was forced into this position by the committee’s unreasonable insistence on pressing forward with contempt despite the attorney general’s good faith offer.”

It’s unclear how much further House Republicans will press, but Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor said they’d bring up Holder’s case for a floor vote next week unless he relents.