Movie to which he took his future wife on their first date Do The Right Thing The Sound of Music

Youthful idea of romantic behaviour Writing pretentious love letters. “I haven’t read The Waste Land for a year … but I will hazard these statements … [T S Eliot’s] fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter,” he wrote to one girlfriend, Alex McNear. “Life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times.” Drawing an approximately 12ft-high heart in the sand on a beach in France, where he was serving as a Mormon missionary, writing “I LOVE ANN” inside it, stretching out on top, then sending the resulting photograph to his future wife

Secret Service codename Renegade Javelin

Worst recorded use of bad language Obama’s memoir Dreams From My Father includes references to a “sorry-ass motherfucker”, a “stupid motherfucker”, a “punk-ass motherfucker” and (in the only instance in which Obama isn’t quoting someone else) “ignorant motherfuckers”. The president retained the swearing in the audiobook version, which he recorded himself “Bloomin’” (as in “Can you believe those bloomin’ Democrats?”) Reporters who covered Romney during his time as Massachusetts governor agree with classmates of Romney’s at Harvard Business School in the early 1970s that they’ve never heard him use language any stronger

Closest brush with death In 2008, the pilot of the MD-81 campaign plane carrying then-Senator Obama radioed an emergency call after losing control of the aircraft’s up-and-down movements In 1968, a Mercedes crashed into the Citroen Romney was driving along a French country road, killing a passenger. French police erroneously pronounced Romney dead at the scene, too

Most notable home improvement project For almost a year, workers have been “building something deep below the White House”, Michael Lewis reported in Vanity Fair, resulting in a large crater. But when he asked for more information, all he was told was that it was “infrastructure” The Romneys provoked derision earlier this year when it emerged that they had had a $55,000 car elevator installed at a home they’re renovating in La Jolla, California

Early anecdote suggesting that he was destined for great things According to his biographer David Maraniss, Obama wrote, in a school essay at the age of 8: “I live near the school. I usually walk to the school with my mom, then go home by myself. Someday I want to be president. I love to visit all the places in Indonesia. Done. The eeeeeeend.” Douglas Anderson, now a business school professor and Romney friend, was in his first year at Stanford University when a student he barely knew approached him. “Do you know Mitt Romney?” he asked. Anderson replied that he didn’t. “Mitt Romney is the finest person I have ever known!” the student said, then walked away

Handedness Left (like Clinton, George HW Bush, Ford, Truman and Hoover) Right (like Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and George W Bush)

Preferred reading material Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which he carried everywhere for several months as a student; Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, which was observed on his reading pile at the White House; Moby-Dick, which he once said was his favourite; and the Harry Potter books, all of which he claims to have read L Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth, which he called “very fun”; Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, which he has been quoting for at least five years, though Diamond accuses him of misrepresenting his views; the Bible, which he describes as his favourite book.

Personal vice Smoking, a habit that continued for the first two years of his presidency. One year ago, after a full physical, he was finally declared “tobacco-free” Romney’s guilty indulgence is a late-night bowl of Coco Pops, or similar sugary cereal – a ritual he calls his “Jethro bowl”, presumably a reference to The Beverley Hillbillies

Reason for not drinking coffee Unknown, but he doesn’t. The president’s preference for Black Forest Berry Honest Tea briefly became a 2008 campaign issue. “Only celebrities like Barack Obama … demand bottles of an organic brew,” a McCain spokesman said “Hot drinks are not for the body or belly,” according to a revelation received by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, in 1833. The same goes for alcohol and smoking. Romney is said to be fond of caffeine-free Coke

Taxes paid for the year 2011 $162,074 on income of $789,674, an effective rate of 20.5% $1.9m on income of $13.7m, an effective rate of 14.1%

Official position on the crucial matter of how many busts of Winston Churchill there should be in the White House On entering the White House, Obama reduced the number of Churchill busts in the White House by 50% (not by 100% or 0%, as his critics and his spokespeople have respectively appeared to claim at various points). There were two, one of which was in the Oval Office. Now there’s one, which isn’t Romney has made a point of explaining that, if elected, he’d return the second (British-loaned) Churchill bust to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Favourite films, according to the campaigns’ potentially spurious answers to various pop-culture questionnaires Casablanca, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Approach to desk tidiness Spartan. Photographs of Obama’s Oval Office desk show it empty, in stark contrast to Bill Clinton’s. The president is, more generally, a declutterer. “I tend to be a spare guy anyway,” he has said Also spartan. In tune with Romney’s famously neat appearance, a reporter who visited his presidential-transition office found it “hyper-organised” with “no piece of paper visible on any desk”

Telling detail illustrating fiercely competitive spirit For his regular basketball game, often played at the court inside the FBI’s offices in Washington, Obama chooses former professional players or college stars. “If you take it easy on him, you’re not invited back,” one player, a former Florida State point-guard, was quoted as saying Romney family vacations are organised around the ‘Romney Olympics’, a structured, mandatory and highly competitive sequence of sporting events, including biking, swimming and running

Telling detail illustrating the limits of his fiercely competitive spirit In 2010, Rey Decerega, a Washington non-profit employee, accidentally elbowed Obama in the mouth during a basketball game, causing an injury that required at least 12 stitches. He was not invited back Concerned that he wasn’t winning sufficiently often, Romney reportedly added new contests in which he was better placed to excel – including “who can hammer the most nails into a board in two minutes”

Parenting style Famously strict. Sasha and Malia are compelled to write reports about their trips, even if their teachers don’t require it; Malia can only use a mobile phone on weekends, and neither girl is allowed to watch TV, except for homework purposes, during the week The one unbreakable rule, Romney’s son Tagg recalls, is that “we were not allowed to say anything negative about my mother”. Each night, the family held a “freewheeling discussion” while sitting together in a room with the lights turned out. In darkness, Tagg says, the Romneys felt they could open up

Height 1.85m 1.88m. (Of the 13 presidential elections since the first televised debate, the taller candidate has won eight. Of the other five, one involved candidates of the same height, and one was Bush v Gore in 2000, in which Gore won the most votes)

Most damaging quote picked up by a ‘hot mic’ “After my election, I have more flexibility” – to Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev, on the subject of missile defence negotiations, in South Korea in March “[Ann] has Austrian Warmbloods… Me, I have a Missouri Fox Trotter. So mine is like a quarter horse, but just a much better gait. It moves very fast, and doesn’t tire, and it’s easy to ride, meaning it’s not boom-boom-boom, it’s just smooth. Very smooth” – to Sean Hannity, before an interview on Fox News in April

Opinion on the “special relationship” with the United Kingdom “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.” (In 2009, the reported assessment of a state department official was more direct: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” “England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions” – from Romney’s book, No Apology

Dog-related outrage Ate dog (along with snake and grasshopper) during his childhood in Indonesia, according to Dreams From My Father. “Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth,” one pro-Romney blogger wrote Tied a crate containing the family dog, Seamus, to the roofrack of his car for the duration of a drive from Boston to Canada. The dog “loved” this form of travel, Ann Romney claims

Healthy-eating trick Spurns mayonnaise Eats only the tops of muffins, because, he argues, the butter sinks downwards. May also be an attempt to connect with Seinfeld fans

Homes owned A six-bedroom mansion in Hyde Park, Chicago A beachfront house in La Jolla, California, described as his “main home”; a two-bedroom townhouse in Belmont, Massachusetts; a six-bedroom house on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire

Favourite TV shows, as claimed in interviews The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Modern Family Modern Family, 30 Rock

Killer productivity tactic Limits mundane choices, for example about food, to limit “decision fatigue” – the psychological phenomenon whereby making some decisions depletes resources for making more important ones At Bain Capital, fined colleagues $20 if they showed up late to meetings. He looked “physically pained”, one remembered, when he once had to pay up himself