President Obama is ahead in new polls in several crucial swing states, potentially slowing Mitt Romney's steady climb in the Electoral College count.
A Public Policy Polling survey found a 5-point lead for Obama in the lynchpin state of Ohio, which is critical to both candidates' campaigns. Obama leads 51 percent to 46 percent in the latest poll.
No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio, so both Romney and Obama has been pouring money and energy into the state.
Romney spent five days there last week, and for a while it looked like the effort was paying off, with several polls showing him taking the lead from Obama. This poll, as well as a Rasmussen poll released at the end of last week, seem to counter that argument.
Obama also leads in Colorado in two polls, one from Gravis and one from Rasmussen. Both firms use automated polling--"robocalls"--that tend to lean Republican, so the 1-point and 2-point margins they found may give a clearer picture of the situation than they would otherwise.
However, a Denver Post poll has Romney up by a point in Colorado.
ARG has Romney and Obama tied in Virginia, while it puts Romney up by a point in Iowa.
And another PPP survey shows Romney up by a point in Florida--a huge prize for whichever candidate can wrest it away from the other. Obama has strong Latino support in the state, but Romney has a staunch ally in popular Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who is Cuban-American. Rubio spoke in support of Romney and the GOP platform at the Republican National Convention in August.
While this latest batch of polls is certainly no landslide for Obama, it does mean Romney's surge from the first presidential debate is probably over, barring another infusion of interest and support from the second debate, scheduled for Tuesday night in Hempstead, N.Y.
As it stands, Romney seems poised to take Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, and he is performing well in Iowa. He is within striking distance of Ohio, but has lost some ground in Colorado and Nevada.
Due to the quirky math of the Electoral College, whichever candidate wins a state receives all of its votes, so candidates concentrate their efforts in states that might swing either way in the election.
Because of the discrepancy this year between the national polls, which show Romney doing well, and the state polls, which show Obama holding on in swing states, it is possible that one candidate may win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College, and in that instance, the Electoral College winner becomes president.
This is historically rare and unlikely, but it happened as recently as 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by only a few hundred votes. Winning Florida, however, gave him enough Electoral College votes to be declared the winner.
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