NorthIowaToday.com

Founded in 2010

News & Entertainment for Mason City, Clear Lake & the Entire North Iowa Region

Romney gains in key polls; Obama fights to hold ground

By William Douglas and Anita Kumar, McClatchy Newspapers –

AKRON, Ohio — What a difference two weeks — and a lackluster debate performance by President Barack Obama — has made for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in key swing states.

Mired in dismal poll numbers in Ohio two weeks ago, a confident and resurgent Romney returned to the Buckeye State and stumped in rural Iowa on Tuesday as new polls show him gaining fast in battleground states and nationally. In one key measure, he marked his first edge over Obama nationally.

“I’ll do everything in my power to strengthen once again the American farm,” a buoyant Romney vowed at an event in Van Meter, Iowa, where he outlined his agriculture policy. “I’ll do everything in my power to strengthen our economy, to create good jobs and rising incomes. I’ll strengthen the values of our homes and communities.”

Obama, working to hold his narrowing lead in Ohio, held a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus and used the final day of voter registration in the state to implore supporters to sign up and cast their ballots on Nov. 6.

“Everything we fought for in 2008 is on the line in 2012,” Obama told an estimated crowd of 15,000. “The American people have worked too hard, and the last thing we can afford to do right now is to go back to the very same policies that got us into this mess in the first place. I cannot allow that to happen. I will not allow it to happen.”

Both candidates and their surrogates fanned across key swing states Tuesday after new polls showed that the election, which was trending Obama’s way before last week’s nationally televised debate, appears to be shifting in Romney’s direction post-debate.

For the first time, the RealClearPolitics.com average of national polls Tuesday found Romney with an edge over Obama, 48 percent to 47.3 percent.

Among the national polls, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center poll found Romney leading Obama 49 percent to 45 percent among likely voters. That was a dramatic surge for Romney from a mid-September survey that found Obama leading 51 percent to 43 percent.

“The debate has fundamentally changed the race in Ohio and elsewhere — reset the election,” said Mike DeWine, the Republican Ohio attorney general and former U.S. senator. “What people saw on TV in Ohio, people saw across the country: Mitt Romney looked like president, acted like a president, and had a plan.”

A CNN/ORC International poll of Ohio released Tuesday found Obama ahead 51 percent to 47 percent, a 4-point lead instead of the 7- to 10-point lead he enjoyed before the debate.

In Michigan, a poll by the Detroit Free Press this week showed that the 10-point lead Obama held in the state last month has shrunk to 3, which is within the survey’s margin of error.

In Pennsylvania, a poll Tuesday showed Obama leading Romney 43 percent to 40 percent, a quarter of the pre-debate leads that reached as high as 12 points, according to Siena College of New York.

“Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes suddenly appear to be up for grabs, as this poll shows Obama only up by 3 points despite a large lead in Philadelphia, the west and northeastern Pennsylvania,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute.

Romney campaign officials, while pleased with their reversal of political fortunes, said they’re not getting ahead of themselves.

“Polls will go up and down, but most of them taken together tell us the campaign is close and will continue to be close nationally and in these key battleground states,” said Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden. “Part of our focus as a campaign is on finding these voters who still haven’t made up their mind, along with voters who voted for Obama in 2008 but are disappointed in the state of the economy, and persuading them to vote for Governor Romney.”

Some Obama campaign officials and surrogates explained the polls shift as part of the natural ebb and flow of a presidential campaign and conceded that the incumbent is in for a tough fight in the closing days to the election.

“That’s not a new approach from our end,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. “I just wanted to make the point that we’ve always run this race like we’re 5 points down. We know that there are going to be many ups and downs … over the next couple of days. We have blinders on. We’re implementing our game plan. We’re focused on getting our supporters out, communicating the choice, and we’ll sleep on November 7th.”

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Even more news:

Watercooler
Copyright 2024 – Internet Marketing Pros. of Iowa, Inc.
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x