Mitt Romney seeks to gain momentum in race

WASHINGTON - Agence France-Presse

Mitt Romney speaks next to US Senator Portman on his plane enroute to Denver. REUTERS photo

Republican Mitt Romney hits the campaign trail hard this week to try to inject some fresh momentum into his flagging presidential bid as polls show his path to the White House narrowing.
 
The vote is six weeks from today and the former Massachusetts governor trails President Barack Obama both in national polls and, more importantly, in eight of the nine crucial swing states that will decide the election.
 
Efforts to claw back some ground on the incumbent since Obama received a significant boost from the Democratic Party Convention at the beginning of the month have fallen into disarray due to a series of campaign missteps.

After rushing to judgment over Obama’s response to the anti-Islamic film that spawned protests in the Muslim world, Romney was embarrassed by a secretly-recorded video in which he wrote off almost half the electorate as “victims” who were dependent on government handouts.
 
Romney said that his poll numbers had declined in swing states because Obama’s campaign is lying about his record, including on issues such as the automobile industry bailout, abortion and taxes.

Under the U.S. system, each state is awarded a certain number of electoral college votes and on election night a candidate needs to reach the magic 270 figure to emerge victorious. The swing states with the largest number of electoral college votes up for grabs are Florida (29), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18) and Virginia (13). Polling of nine swing states shows Romney leading only in North Carolina and trailing by more than four percent in both Ohio and Virginia.