Ohio Deadlocked Between Obama, Romney

With just one week to go until Election Day, the presidential race in Ohio couldn’t get any tighter.A new poll released by the Ohio News Organization showed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) in a virtual tie with Incumbent President Barack Obama (D), each polling 49 percent of Ohio’s votes.“It’s the fourth quarter,” said Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (R). “It’s a tie game but we’re in the red zone, folks, we’ve got the momentum on our side.Portman and the Romney camp have good reason to feel confident with the latest results.  Just one month ago, Ohio seemed nearly out of reach for Romney and his supporters, as he trailed Obama by nine points.Despite two strong performances from the president in the last two debates, Obama has continued to lose ground on Romney with Ohio voters.However, Obama’s camp has some reason to still be optimistic when looking at other polls released recently.A CNN poll has Obama up on Romney by four points and a TIME poll has the president up by five.David Axelrod, a senior campaign strategist for the Obama campaign, also advises everyone to look more at the early voting numbers in Ohio rather than the polls.Axelrod may have a point.According to Reuters/Ipsos polling data, the president has a commanding lead over Romney when it comes to early voting, winning 59 percent of the vote to 41. Other outlets have showed Obama’s lead even higher, leading by as much as 27 points.  According to the Ohio News poll, one-fifth of its respondents said they had already cast their vote.Yet, Democrats still have reason to worried when it comes to their party’s morale.Republicans surveyed had 54 percent respond that they were “very enthusiastic” to vote for their candidate, while only 45 percent of Democrats responded the same.Obama took Ohio on his way to the White House in 2008, beating John McCain (R) by four points.No candidate in the past 12 election cycles has been elected as president without winning Ohio.The Ohio News poll surveyed 1015 likely voters and used land lines and cellphones to reach voters.