President Barack Obama holds a five-point lead over Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in a new Ohio poll, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
Obama leads 51-46 percent in the latest Ohio Newspaper Poll and also has a five-point lead on the question of who would do the best job with the economy,
the Journal reported.
“Clearly, how Ohioans view the two candidates in terms of their ability to improve Ohio’s economy over the next four years will go a long way in determining who wins Ohio’s 18 electoral votes,” Eric Rademacher, co-director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati, which conducted the poll, told the paper.
“Ninety-five percent of voters who say Romney would do best on the economy choose Romney for president; 96 percent of voters who say Obama would do best pick Obama,” he said.
The gap between the two candidates is biggest in Northeast Ohio, where Obama leads by 16 points, 57-41 percent. Romney leads in Southeast and Southwest Ohio, by 13 and 10 points, respectively, according to the Journal.
“Ohio is a complex state where an issue like ‘the economy’ means many things,” Rademacher told the paper, “For some regions, it may mean the auto industry, for others it may mean gas prices … others, wages and benefits, and for still others, it relates directly to unemployment.”
Rademacher added, “It may or may not be helpful to recall — in recent presidential elections, there have been times when both Democrats and Republicans stayed home in large numbers. More Democrats than Republicans are expressing a likelihood of voting at this point in time — but it would not be unheard of for this to move around considerably between now and Election Day.”
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