No Republican candidate has ever won a presidential election without first winning Ohio.
Of the state's biggest three newspapers, two endorsed Obama, The Plain Dealer and the Akron Beacon Journal, while The Columbus Dispatch supported Mitt Romney, CNN reports.
The Plain Dealer, which endorsed Obama four years ago, was more critical this time around.
Ohio in particular has benefited from his bold decision to revive the domestic auto industry. Because of his determination to fulfill a decades- old dream of Democrats, 30 million more Americans will soon have health insurance. His Race to the Top initiative seeded many of the education reforms embodied in Cleveland's Transformation Plan. He ended the war in Iraq and refocused the battle to disrupt al- Qaida and its terrorist allies. He ordered the risky attack inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.
The paper said this year's endorsements comes with "less enthusiasm and optimism," stating they wish Obama would have used his campaign to accurately show and fix the challenges Americans are facing. They said Obama didn't live up to his promise of putting the nation back to work, keeping with finances and recovering the economy.
Not only do we still believe this president can do those things, we think he can do it with policies most likely to lift Ohio and Ohioans. Obama's leadership has made a difference when it mattered most.
In its endorsement, The Columbus Dispatch said Romney would be the right candidate to put the nation back together.
Four years later, the nation is in the grip of the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.
Obama has failed. That is why Mitt Romney is the preferred choice for president. Romney's adult life has been spent turning around troubled private and public institutions. These turnarounds include scores of companies acquired and restructured by Bain Capital, the investment firm he founded in 1984. Not all were successes, but that is because to a significant degree, many of the companies Bain took on were high-risk.
According to a recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac University/CBS News survey , 50 percent of likely voters in Ohio support Obama and 45 percent support Romney. The race has been tight in Ohio and other swing state Florida for some time.