Auto bailout helps Obama hold consistent lead in Ohio

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TheHill:

President Obama holds a small but significant lead in the perennial battleground state of Ohio, where a victory could spoil any chance for Mitt Romney to win the White House.

No Republican has won the presidency without winning Ohio, and Obama has been on a mission to keep the state’s 18 electoral votes in his column. His trip Wednesday to Akron and Mansfield was his ninth to the state this year and 24th since entering the Oval Office.

 

The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Obama with a 4.8 percentage point lead over Romney, an advantage further emphasized by a Quinnipiac University-CBS News-New York Times poll published Wednesday that showed the president with a 6-point edge in the state.

While conservative pollster Rasmussen Reports found Obama with only a 2-point lead earlier this month, the pattern seems clear: Obama has an edge in perhaps the most critical state in the nation.

Democratic strategists and independent political observers credit Obama’s advantage to his support for the auto bailout and strategy of appealing to blue-collar workers. They also note that Ohio’s 7.2 percent unemployment rate is a full percentage point lower than the national average.

“Romney is going to have to do something very unusual to take Ohio away from the president,” said Jim Friedman, a Cleveland lawyer whose involvement with the state’s Democratic Party has spanned several decades.

Obama “is not doing great in Ohio, but he’s doing well enough,” said Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, who helped conduct the latest poll. “Obviously these numbers are good for him, and if the president wins this state, he’s going to get reelected.”

The auto bailout is perhaps Obama’s trump card in Ohio.

Friedman argued Obama’s support and Romney’s opposition to the bailout are resonating in Ohio, where the car industry “is both historically and psychologically important.”

“Even though the automotive industry in Ohio is much smaller than it once was, Ohio voters still think of it as critically important,” he said.

Obama campaign spokesman Frank Benenati claimed that as many as 1 in 8 jobs in Ohio was dependent upon the car industry, whether directly or indirectly.

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, asserted that the bailout had salvaged 2,200 jobs in Ohio dealerships.

The industry is especially important in the northern part of the state, where Obama’s campaign is counting on a heavy turnout.

Romney is trying to battle Obama on the bailout, and on Wednesday his team released a new TV ad featuring an Ohio car dealership owner, Al Zarzour, who blames the bailout for forcing the closure of General Motors dealerships like his.