President Barack Obama holds a single-digit lead over Mitt Romney in the Badger State, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll. Obama won the state in 2008 by 14 points over Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
The battleground state went from "lean Obama" to true "toss-up” in the wake of Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to be his running mate. CNN said one factor in changing the state’s status was a new poll that matched two others from last week that indicate that the contest in Wisconsin is close. CNN reported, “While Ryan's announcement did not dramatically alter the presidential poll numbers in Wisconsin, it did change the way both campaigns viewed the state of the race in the state.”
In the poll conducted after the selection of Ryan, 49 percent of registered voters in Wisconsin said they back Obama to 45 percent supporting Romney. Obama’s advantage is within the survey's sampling error.
"Both campaigns see the Ryan pick as something that makes Wisconsin more competitive,” said CNN’s John King. “When we visited this week, every Republican we spoke to suggested it would help keep a Republican base already energized by the recent recall election fired up and hungry for more in November."
"And we saw the impact on the Obama campaign firsthand,” King said. “Within hours they rewrote their script for calls to voters to add some sharp criticism of Ryan and his Medicare plan. But the way they did it was telling: A couple of lines about how is a nice guy, sure, but then the segue to the attack and a script that included a line saying President Obama was more in tune with working class voters.”
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