Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney poses for photographs with students at Fairfield Elementary School after stopping to greet them, Oct. 8, 2012, in Fairfield, Va. (Evan Vucci / AP Photo)

A new Pew Research Center poll which covers the days immediately following the first presidential debate (Oct. 4-7), shows Mitt Romney swinging ahead of President Barack Obama among likely voters, 49 percent -45 percent, and tied among registered voters at 46 percent.

Polling from Pew in mid-September had Obama up among likely voters 51-43 percent and 51-42 registered voters. Romney's success is due in large part to his improvement among women. Back in September, Romney trailed Obama among women by 18 points. Today, the two are among women, 47 percent to 47 percent.

The poll released today also showed Romney improving his standing from September on almost every issue including taxes, Medicare and Jobs.

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An associate researcher at Pew tells me that this poll has given Romney "his first statistically significant lead on the economy of the year."

On the question of who would do better on improving the job situation, Romney is ahead by 8 points (49-41 percent)

Romney also improved his standing on the question of who looks out for the middle class.

Pew's researcher also adds: "Important to this is a notable surge in GOP enthusiasm and engagement. There are now as many strong Romney supporters as strong Obama supporters - a wide gap in every earlier poll. And the GOP has re-opened a wide lead in engagement - the share of Republicans "giving a lot of thought" to the campaign spiked from 73 percent to 82 percent (which helps Romney with the likely voters numbers)."

The Pew poll shows a wider swing than other recent polls, but reinforces a a trend seen in Gallup polling today that Romney has benefited from a post-debate bounce.

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