President Barack Obama's lead in the vital swing state of Ohio diminished this week, with the numbers among likely voters showing the president still ahead of Republican challenger Mitt Romney but within the margin of error. However, other polls show the president continues to lead nationally.
In a CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday, Obama and Romney are nearly neck-and-neck in Ohio, with the president supported by 51 percent of likely voters and Romney by 47 percent. Obama's four-point lead compares to the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Meanwhile, Obama's lead among registered voters in Ohio remains strong, with the poll showing the president with a 10-point lead over the former Massachusetts governor.
The poll was taken in the days immediately following the president's poor performance at the first presidential debate in Denver on October 3rd.
Although Romney received a temporary bump, his victory over the president was short-lived, a separate poll showed.
"Registered voter trends suggest that Romney's initial gains from his strong performance in last week's debate may be short-lived," a Gallup poll also released Tuesday said.
Although the poll showed the president was beginning to recover from his trouncing during the debate, the closeness of voter preference in the Gallup poll - 49 percent for Obama versus 47 for Romney - shows he will have to do more to win the actual popular vote.
"All in all, if the election were held today, Gallup's analysis suggests that the race would be too close to call," Gallup added.
Other national polling stats aren't so bleak for the president. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday morning shows although Romney is now at his most popular ever, so is the president.
Likewise, the president's favorability rates still soar over Governor Romney's, at 55 percent favorable to Romney's 47 percent.
However, the poll points out that only George W. Bush and perhaps Harry Truman (if more data were available) have been re-elected with a job performance rating as low as Obama's.
Finally, New York Times poll guru and statistician Nate Silver, famous for correctly predicting all but one state's voting outcome in the 2008 election, acknowledged the Romney bump but gave him only a 28.8 percent chance of winning enough electoral votes to grab the presidency.
"The forecast model is not quite ready to jump on board with the notion that the race has become a literal toss-up," Silver wrote on Tuesday in his New York Times blog, which nonetheless showed the president's chance of winning dropping by 13.5 percentage points since September.
Silver added, "Mr. Romney will need to maintain his bounce for a few more days, or extend it into high-quality polls of swing states, before we can be surer about that."
by RTT Staff Writer
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