Latest polls: National: NPR: Romney 48-47% (but Obama leads 50-46% in the battleground states). CBS/NYT: Obama 48-47%. ABC/Washington Post tracker: Romney 49-48%. States: FL: Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT: Obama 48-47%. OH: Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT: Obama 50-45%. VA: Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT: Obama 49-47%. MI: Detroit News/WDIV/Glengariff: Obama 48-45%. PA: Franklin and Marshall: Obama 49-45%.
Those Ohio numbers might explain Romney’s continued use of an ad that has been proven to be misleading and doubling down with a radio ad that goes even further. The Boston Globe: “The ad fight continues in Ohio between President Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s campaigns over the auto industry, with Romney doubling down Tuesday with a new radio spot insinuating that the 2009 bailout caused the industry to ship jobs to China. … The problem that the Republican nominee faces is that the $80 billion government bailout for Chrysler and General Motors helped save auto jobs in northern Ohio, industry analysts have repeatedly said. And while Chrysler is restarting its China operations for its Chinese market, it will not be moving Jeep production from the United States to China, as the Romney ad infers, the company reiterated Tuesday.” And: “Even after Chrysler said it has no such intent, Romney’s campaign released a 30-second ad in Toledo on Sunday that implied the outsourcing of Ohio jobs and said Romney would do more for the auto industry.”
“Hurricane Sandy plunged the presidential campaign into an unprecedented period of uncertainty, leaving both sides scrambling to grasp the right tone for voters coping with a historic natural disaster,” the New York Daily News reports. “The monster storm, likely the biggest ‘October surprise’ in history, left both campaigns without a script, forcing them to make uncharted, and potentially politically-damaging, decisions on the fly.”
NBCNews.com’s Tom Curry looks at how the storm is wreaking havoc on election plans throughout the Northeast, down to Virginia, and West Virginia.
“As the storm lashed the East Coast and Midwest with gale-force winds, torrential rain and flooding, election officials faced new challenges: power outages, floods and snowstorms that could hinder voting through Election Day,” USA Today writes.
