Virginia, Swing State | featured news

President Obama sought to shore up his standing in Midwestern states, including Iowa and Wisconsin, while Mitt Romney fought to secure critical states like Florida and Virginia.

Stumping in western Virginia on Thursday, Mitt Romney resumed his full-throated critique of President Barack Obama, mocking the president's proposed new cabinet position to oversee businesses' needs and predicting four more years of a stagnant economy should the incumbent be re-elected.

People in Florida, Virginia and Indiana have gotten calls falsely telling them they can vote early by phone and don't need to go to a polling place. In suburban Broward County, Fla., a handful of elderly voters who requested absentee ballots say they were visited by unknown people claiming to be authorized to collecttheballots.

With the presidential contest in Virginia teetering on a knife's edge, Mitt Romney is counting on the economic concerns of suburban women to lock up a state that's almost a must-carry for him. Joanie Smerdzinski, 34, is one of them. She voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and still finds him more likable than his Republican rival. "I mean, would I want to hang out with Romney? No," said the political independent, who also disagrees with Romney's opposition to same-sex marriage.

President Obama is clinging to a slender, four-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney in Virginia, as both sides ramp up already aggressive campaigns in the crucial battleground state, according to a new Washington Post poll.

Retiree Robert Stevens says he turns off the television when the attack ads appear, and he hangs up the phone when it's a presidential campaign calling. At this point, he says, "I don't know who I am going to vote for."

President Obama retains a lead in Ohio, but his race with Republican Mitt Romney has tightened in the key states of Florida and Virginia, says a new poll. Obama leads Romney 51%-43% in Ohio, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College Poll. The two candidate are locked in a statistical tie in Florida, where Obama leads 47%-46%, and in Virginia, where the president is ahead 48%-46%.

Are you better off now than four years ago? If you live in one of the key swing states, chances are the answer is "yes." And that could prove to be a difference maker in the competitive race for the White House.

A new Fox News poll shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney in three key states: Ohio, Florida and Virginia. The president leads by 7 percentage points in both Ohio (49%-42%) and Virginia (50%-43%), Fox says. In Florida -- where Obama campaigns today --- he leads Romney, 49%-44%.