Profile: Barack Obama

Mr Obama re-election message warns Mr Romney does not have middle class interests at heart

President Barack Obama enters the home stretch of his re-election campaign amid a still-struggling economy, with national polls showing him virtually tied with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

But Mr Obama has one big thing going for him: voters seem very much to like him personally, and many remain loyal to him even as they give him low marks for his handling of the economy.
If his campaign team can convince his 2008 supporters to flood back to the polls this November, while also persuading undecided voters that Mr Romney does not have their interests at heart, he will win a second term.
Mr Obama, America's first black president, had a turbulent first term in office.

• Born 4 Aug 1961 in Hawaii
• Studied law at Harvard
• Worked as a civil rights lawyer in Chicago
• Served in Illinois state senate 1996-2004
• Elected to the US Senate in 2004
• Bested Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic presidential nomination
• Won the 2008 presidential election, defeating Republican Senator John McCain

He and his fellow Democrats scored several historic achievements. But the US economy has struggled mightily since Mr Obama took office amid one of the worst economic recessions in decades: job growth has been anaemic and the US unemployment rate has remained over 8%.

Add to that, the Democratic Party suffered historic losses in the mid-term polls in November 2010, with the Republicans emerging energised and more determined than ever to promote their conservative agenda and stymie the president's plans.
Mitt Romney and the Republicans are now betting that Mr Obama will be unable to inspire the same enthusiasm that carried him to the White House and that independent voters will turn away from his policies amid a still-lagging economy.
Oratory, charm, background Barack Hussein Obama made history on 4 November 2008, when he easily defeated Republican rival John McCain to become the first black president of the United States.
Aged 47 when he was inaugurated, Mr Obama was also the first urban president since Harry Truman and the first president born in Hawaii.

More than a million supporters and fans stood in the freezing cold to see Mr Obama inaugurated in 2008

And unlike John McCain, George Bush and Bill Clinton, his background was not steeped in the Vietnam War or the cultural conflicts of the 1960s.
Since he took office, the Democrats overcame Republicans' united opposition to pass an economic stimulus programme, overhaul the US healthcare system, lay down new rules for Wall Street and the banking industry, and rescue the US auto industry from collapse.
Later, he and the Democrats overturned a two-decade-old law banning openly gay Americans from serving in the US military. Wielding his presidential authority, Mr Obama also acted without the consent of Congress to grant temporary legal status to some young illegal immigrants brought to the US as children.
Mr Obama despatched a team of commandos to kill Osama Bin Laden, brought the US war in Iraq to a close and struck a new nuclear arms treaty with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Early in his presidency he escalated the US-led war in Afghanistan, and the US has seen a consequent rise in violence there. But Mr Obama has pledged to turn the security mission in Afghanistan over to Afghan troops by the end of 2014, thus ending the more than a decade-long conflict.
International upbringing Mr Obama was born in 1961 and named for his father, a Kenyan intellectual who met Mr Obama's mother Ann, a white teenager from Kansas, while studying at the University of Hawaii.
When Mr Obama was a toddler, his father abandoned the family and the couple divorced. Father and son were to meet only once more, during a brief visit to Hawaii by the elder Barack Obama.

The White House released an image of Mr Obama in the situation room as US commandos killed Bin Laden

When Mr Obama was six, his mother married an Indonesian man and the family moved to Jakarta. Then known as "Barry", Mr Obama later moved back to Hawaii, where he was raised largely by his grandparents.
Mr Obama's upbringing in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country by population, and his descent from Kenyan Muslims fuelled right-wing conspiracy theories that he was not born in the US, or that he is a secret Muslim.
Mr Obama produced two separate birth certificates to prove that he was born in the US state of Hawaii.
After graduating from Columbia University in New York, Mr Obama worked for three years as a community organiser in poor neighbourhoods in Chicago.
He then attended Harvard Law School, becoming the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.
While working at a Chicago law firm, he met Michelle Robinson. The couple married in 1992 and have two daughters, Malia and Sasha; the Obamas are the first couple since Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter to live in the White House with young children.
After Harvard, Mr Obama returned to Chicago to practise civil rights law, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination.
He joined the law faculty at the University of Chicago, where he was lauded as a popular teacher and an exceptional legal thinker.

"Barry" Obama only met his father once after Barack Obama Sr left the family to study at Harvard

In 1995 he published his first book, Dreams from My Father, a memoir, and the following year he was elected to the Illinois state senate.
As a state senator, he spoke out strongly against the coming Iraq War, a position that later helped him win early support in the Democratic primary race.
From there, Mr Obama won national prominence during his 2004 run for the US Senate, when he electrified the Democratic National Convention with a speech about self-reliance, aspiration and national unity.
After his landslide election to the Senate a few months later, he became one of the most visible figures in Washington, and soon published a second best-selling book, a politics-and-policy tract entitled The Audacity of Hope.
On Capitol Hill, Mr Obama established a liberal voting record, but also worked with Republican colleagues on HIV/Aids-education and prevention and nuclear weapons proliferation.
When he embarked on his presidential campaign in February 2007, he had been in the Senate only two years, and his opponents sought to cast him as unqualified and ill-prepared for the presidency.
But his campaign excited millions of liberals - especially young voters - who were yearning for something new in Washington after two terms under George W Bush.
Mr Obama clinched the Democratic nomination after a long and gruelling battle against former first lady Hillary Clinton, whom he later appointed secretary of state.
Economic dissatisfaction His victory over septuagenarian Republican Senator John McCain was aided in part by public perceptions Republican policies had contributed to the economic tumble - and that Mr McCain was ill-equipped to lead a recovery.

Race to the White House

Romney49%

Obama47%

Poll of polls, 26 October

Now, Mr Obama and his team of strategists and advisers hope they can duplicate his 2008 victory.

The recession has ended, employment figures have slowly climbed and other indicators show the economy has improved.
But there lingers among the electorate a widespread sense of unease and dissatisfaction with the way things are going.
Mr Romney, his vice-presidential running mate Paul Ryan, and the Republican Party have had their campaign bolstered by big-spending patrons eager to despatch Mr Obama to political oblivion.
They blame Mr Obama's policies for the ongoing economic malaise, and hope voters will overcome their fondness for and political investment in him.