Poll: Obama, Romney dead even in swing state Ohio

Asso­ci­ated Press

CLEVELAND — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can chal­lenger Mitt Rom­ney were dead­locked with 49 per­cent each in a new Ohio poll pub­lished Sun­day in the swing state.

The poll pub­lished by Ohio’s biggest news­pa­pers was con­ducted among 1,015 likely vot­ers who were reached by land line tele­phones and cell­phones between Oct. 18 and Oct. 23. Some were called before the final pres­i­den­tial debate Oct. 22.

The Ohio News­pa­per Poll had a mar­gin of error of plus or minus 3.1 per­cent­age points.

The impor­tance of Ohio to both cam­paigns has been high­lighted by almost non-stop tag-team stump­ing by Obama and Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Rom­ney and his GOP run­ning mate Paul Ryan.

All four have cam­paigned in Ohio since last week’s final debate and Rom­ney joined Ryan on Sun­day for the sec­ond day of a cross-state bus swing.

Obama plans to return to Ohio on Mon­day with an appear­ance in Demo­c­ra­tic strong­hold Youngstown with for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton.

“Absent any more twists and turns, a remark­able pres­i­den­tial cam­paign may end with the cam­paign that exe­cutes the best ground game, nar­rowly deliv­er­ing Ohio for the next pres­i­dent of the United States,” said Eric Rademacher, co-director of the Uni­ver­sity of Cincinnati’s Insti­tute for Pol­icy Research.

The lat­est polling (bit.ly/Skidpk) showed Rom­ney tight­en­ing or clos­ing the lead that Obama had com­ing out of the Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tion. In the pre­vi­ous Ohio News­pa­per Poll, released Sept. 23, Obama had a 5-point lead.

A major­ity in the new Ohio News­pa­per Poll, 62 per­cent, said that the debates would not make a dif­fer­ence in their vote, while 23 per­cent said the pres­i­den­tial debates would make them more likely to vote for Romney.

Nearly one-fifth of respon­dents indi­cated they had already voted.

Other Ohio News­pa­per Poll findings:

— Fifty per­cent of vot­ers said Obama would do the best job han­dling for­eign pol­icy, com­pared with 46 per­cent for Romney.

— Fifty-one per­cent said Rom­ney would do the best job han­dling the econ­omy, com­pared with 45 per­cent for Obama.

Posted by AP News on Oct 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.