Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan continued their all-out push yesterday to maintain a lead among voters in Florida and take control of Ohio.
Most polls give Romney a slim advantage in the Sunshine State, which has 29 Electoral College votes. Rasmussen Reports puts Romney up 50 to 48 percent.
Rasmussen shows a dead heat in Ohio, with Romney and President Obama polling at 48 percent each.
“We cannot afford four more years like these last four years,” Ryan told 1,000 supporters at a rally in eastern Ohio yesterday. “And we don’t have to.”
A key demographic he targeted in his five-city bus tour of Ohio yesterday was working-class women, or so-called “waitress moms.”
To win their votes, the Romney campaign is focusing on depicting Obama’s economic policies as failed — a view shared by Julie Moore, a Waffle House waitress in Delaware, Ohio.
“I really just hope Obama doesn’t win,” she said. “I don’t know if [Romney] will do any better, but it can’t get any worse.”
Moore added that “even the Democrats in my family won’t vote for Obama.”
Obama’s strategy for Ohio and the rest of the nation involves a massive voter-turnout operation, which includes pushing people to cast ballots early.
“I voted for Barack. He’s my rock,” said Dorothy Smith, a retiree, who waited on line to vote early in Cincinnati. “He looks out for the common person — that’s me.”
Obama spoke in New Hampshire yesterday.
“We don’t know how this thing is going to play out,” he told campaign volunteers at a Teamsters hall there. “These four electoral votes right here could make all the difference.”
Romney made three campaign stops in Florida yesterday in an effort to increase his lead there.
At a packed Pensacola Civic Center, he scolded Obama for “shrinking from the magnitude of the times” and advancing an agenda about “small things.”