A slew of polls from swing states crucial to both presidential campaigns was released late on Thursday, and they paint a worrisome picture for Barack Obama's reelection hopes.
In two of those states, Colorado and Florida, Republican challenger Mitt Romney has overtaken Obama and now leads.
Romney has made gains in several other states, and polls disagree on who is currently in the lead in Virginia, a state Obama has had definite control of until recently.
A Miami Herald poll released Thursday put Romney 7 points ahead of the president, a huge lead in a state that went for Obama in 2008 and was the decisive state in the contentious 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
Most other polls put Romney slightly ahead, with a lead of less than 2 points.
Since last week, and his poor performance in the first presidential debate, Obama has lost support nationwide, among traditional Democratic constituencies like women, and in the swing states.
At first it seems like Mitt Romney's post-debate bounce was affecting the swing states less than the nation as a whole. Some analysts speculated that voters in swing states are exposed to far more information about the candidates than the rest of the country, and so are in some ways inoculated against large popularity swings.
This may be true, but resistance to the Romney bounce did not hold in the swing states.
Due to the quirky math of the Electoral College, the winner of a state receives all of its votes, so the election will be decided by the nine states that might go for either candidate: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
While Obama has been losing support in the national popular vote, the campaign had hoped strong showing in the swing states would clinch the Electoral College and the presidency.
That's still possible, but it is looking less likely. New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, and Wisconsin seems safely Democratic, but Ohio and its 18 electoral votes is teetering on the edge of Republican territory. No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio, and if Romney does not take the state, he will have to win both Florida and North Carolina.
Currently, that scenario looks plausible, but it is not a path Romney wants to be forced to take.
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