Mitt Romney, Swing State | featured news

President Obama is clinging to a slender, four-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney in Virginia, as both sides ramp up already aggressive campaigns in the crucial battleground state, according to a new Washington Post poll.

Under the bright lights of a high school football field in Defiance, Ohio, Mitt Romney's opposition to the 2009 auto bailout reared its head again as a campaign issue that could help decide the result of this critical swing state.

New polls released on Wednesday and Thursday continue to show President Barack Obama holding narrow leads in a handful of critical battleground states, but running within a whisker of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney nationwide.

With the debates behind them, President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney launched themselves Tuesday into a final sprint across the half a dozen or so states that will probably decide which of the two claims the White House on Nov. 6.

Will you cast your vote this fall on a faulty electronic machine that's partly owned by the Romney Family? Will that machine decide whether Romney will then inherit the White House? Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.

Mitt Romney is showing confidence about his standing in North Carolina and shifting campaign staff to other battleground states. "With the increasingly widening polls in North Carolina, we will continue to allocate resources, including key senior staff, to other states," Romney spokesman Michael Levoff told The News & Observer in Raleigh.

Another poll, another close result between President Obama and Mitt Romney. Obama leads by a single point -- 49%-48% -- in the latest Politico/George Washington University Battleground Poll released Monday morning, well within the margin of error. On the other hand, Romney leads 50%-48% in the poll's 10 top "battleground states:" Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The race between President Obama and Mitt
Romney is closer than ever, including the
measure that will decide it: The Electoral
College. Obama leads in states with 201 electoral
votes, according to state polling averages
compiled by the RealClearPolitics website. Romney leads in states with 191 electoral
votes.

President Obama retains a lead in Ohio, but his race with Republican Mitt Romney has tightened in the key states of Florida and Virginia, says a new poll. Obama leads Romney 51%-43% in Ohio, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College Poll. The two candidate are locked in a statistical tie in Florida, where Obama leads 47%-46%, and in Virginia, where the president is ahead 48%-46%.

President Obama leads Republican nominee Mitt Romney 49% to 45% in the battleground state of Iowa.