WASHINGTON — There’s “Mittmentum” in the Buckeye State.
A new poll shows that President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are tied in the state that is being viewed as most critical to the presidency: Ohio.
Both candidates are at 49 percent, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer/Ohio News Organization poll.
The survey is bad news for Obama, who collected 51 percent of the poll’s survey last month and had consistently been the leader in earlier polls.
“Absent any more twists and turns, a remarkable presidential campaign may end with the campaign that executes the best ground game, narrowly delivering Ohio for the next president of the United States,” Eric Rademacher, co-director of the University of Cincinnati’s Institute for Policy Research, said in a report announcing the poll results.
No GOP presidential candidate has ever won the White House without capturing Ohio’s 18 electoral votes.
With nine days to go in the race, Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), were in Ohio yesterday for three events bashing the president, who was in Washington dealing with the impending storm expected to slam into the East Coast.
“The president thinks this is the time to just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Romney told a crowd of about 3,000 at the Celina Fieldhouse. “Do you want the same or do you want change?”
“Change!” the crowd roared.
The Obama campaign expressed concern yesterday about the impact Hurricane Sandy will have on early voting, which shows they have a commanding lead over Romney in early ballots cast.
“Obviously we want unfettered access to the polls, because we believe that the more people come out, the better we are going to do,” Obama chief strategist David Axelrod said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “To the extent that it makes it harder, that’s a source of concern.”
Obama, following a briefing on preparations for Hurricane Sandy, said, “We’re obviously going to have to take a look” at the impact on voting.
Maryland shut down its early voting yesterday, and other East Coast states were considering doing the same.