Ohio Presidential Polls: Obama Leads By 5 Points in Ohio Time Magazine Poll; Can Romney Regain His Momentum?

Bad news for Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the crucial swing state of Ohio.

A new Time Magazine poll released late Wednesday shows President Obama has a 5-point lead in Ohio over Romney, 49 percent to 44 percent.

This continues a trend of positive or neutral polls for the president there. In the last two weeks, nearly every poll to come out of the state has shown Obama either tied or up as much as 5 points.

Obama's average lead among those polls is 2.25 points.

After factoring in the Time poll, RealClearPolitics gives Obama a total average margin of 2.1 points over Romney.

FiveThirtyEight gives Obama over a 73 percent chance to take the state.

The Time poll actually found a dead heat between the candidates among voters who have not yet cast a ballot, with 45 percent support each.

But Ohio allows early voting, and in 2008 nearly a third of Ohio voters did so before Election Day.

Among respondents who had already voted, 60 percent said they voted for Obama, while only 30 percent said they voted for Romney.

Combining both samples resulted in the 5-point total lead for Obama.

The poll also found Obama winning women handily, with 56 percent of female voters supporting him, while only 37 percent supported Romney.

This contradicts several recent polls showing Romney undermining Obama's support among women, a traditionally Democratic demographic.

In 2008, Obama won the women's vote nationwide by 13 points over John McCain, far less than the 19-point deficit Romney suffers in this poll.

While Romney won the majority of male support, he did so with only 51 percent of men, compared to 42 percent supporting Obama. That's much closer than other polls have shown.

Romney also takes the white vote, but by a smaller margin than usual, 49 percent to Obama's 43 percent.

While most national polls have Romney slightly ahead in the popular vote count, Obama has been slowly making up ground since the second presidential debate last week.

If Romney can't win in Ohio, his options for winning the Electoral College dwindle significantly.

Romney needs Florida to even stay competitive, and that looks likely. He also needs Virginia, which, like North Carolina, bucked its usual trend in 2008 and voted for Obama.

North Carolina was recently called for Romney, and it's very possible that Virginia will follow its lead, though polls there are close.

Without Ohio, Romney then needs to sweep every other swing state: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and Hew Hampshire.

Michigan and Wisconsin are also swing states, but there's no way Romney could lose Ohio and win either of them.

Romney leads in New Hampshire right now, and he's even with Obama in Colorado, but he trails slightly in both Nevada and Iowa.

Conceivably, Romney could win everything but New Hampshire and tie Obama in electoral votes, 269 each.

In that instance, the House of Representatives chooses the president, a vote Romney should win.

Still, an Obama bounce from his win in the final presidential debate has yet to materialize, and both campaigns have two weeks to push their ground games to the limit.

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