Electoral College: Presidential Polls Show Romney’s Chances Slipping In Crucial Ohio

The electoral college chances for Mitt Romney are growing more bleak as presidential polls show Barack Obama maintaining a slim but steady lead in Ohio, a state necessary for the GOP candidate to win the election.

With national presidential polls showing Romney tied or slightly leading, the state of the race appears to be a toss-up. But Obama is holding an edge in the electoral college map, leading enough swing states to put him over the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the election.

As The Huffington Post notes, new Ohio poll released on Wednesday morning show Obama holding his lead. The presidential polls, released by CBS News, The New York Times and The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed Obama holding a 5 percentage point advantage over Romney in Ohio.

The HuffPost Pollster tracking model, which combines a number of polls, shows Obama holding onto a lead in Ohio of just over 2 percentage points (48.4 to 46.1 percent).

With the electoral college likely coming down to Ohio, both candidates are putting considerable resources into the state. Mitt Romney has planned a major kick-off rally near Cincinnati on Friday, on that the Washington Post noted will be on the scale of the Republican National Convention:

“Nearly 100 governors, senators, congressmen, mayors, Olympic gold medalists and other Republican luminaries are scheduled to join Romney and his vice presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), in a Cincinnati suburb Friday night for a huge rally designed both to inject new energy into their Ohio campaign and to launch the Republican ticket on its final, frenetic three days of barnstorming before Election Day.”

The remaining six days of the campaign will be all-or-nothing for Romney in Ohio, political experts say. Without the Buckeye State, his chances in the electoral college are incredibly slim.