Swing States: Obama Leads In Two Important Battlegrounds In New Polls

New polls show President Obama holding a lead over Mitt Romney in two states that look to be pivotal to the 2012 election, Ohio and Florida, though the polls disagree as to the size of Obama’s lead

Some new polls show Obama opening his largest leads yet over Mitt Romney. Surveys from The Washington Post and the polling partnership of CBS News, The New York Times and Quinnipiac University show Obama leading by margins approaching double-digits in Ohio and Florida, The Huffington Post reported.

Within the individual swing states, polls varied as to the size of Obama’s lead, the report noted. In Florida, results ranged from a 9-point Obama lead in the CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac poll to a 4-point advantage in the Washington Post poll. A Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald/Mason Dixon poll showed Obama clinging to a 1-point lead in Florida.

But despite the outliers, most polls point to Obama holding a comfortable lead in a swing state that many believe Mitt Romney must win in order to take the election. The HuffPost Pollster tracking model, which aggregates results from all national polls to come up with an average estimate, shows that Obama leads Romney by more than 5 percentage points in Florida.

Obama also has shown to have wide leads in Ohio, another important swing state. He leads by 10 points in the CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac poll and 8 points in the Washington Post.

Another polling firm, Gravis Marketing, found that Obama is holding onto a 1-point lead over Romney in Ohio, but Gravis is a call center that does not sample cell phones, cutting out a mostly younger portion of the population likely to support Obama.

As The Huffington Post noted, the surveys may vary but all point to a consistent trend: Obama is widening his lead in the swing states needed by Romney if he wants to win the election.