Obama Leading In Ohio, Poll Finds

Brian Heath paints a Barack Obama campaign logo on Gary Lahman's garage just outside of Bowling Green, Ohio. (By J.d. Pooley -- Getty Images)

Obama's lead in Ohio stems in large part from broad support among women, young voters and those focused on the country's, and their own, finances.

Women divided 50-50 between Bush and Kerry four years ago. Now they break for Obama by a 14-point margin. Men tilt narrowly to the Republican nominee, just as they did toward Bush, according to network exit polling.

McCain holds a seven-point edge among white voters, narrower than Bush's 12 points in 2004, with the difference primarily among white women. Almost all black voters support Obama. Four years ago, 16 percent of African Americans supported Bush over Kerry.

Obama also is doing better with young and old voters than Kerry did on Election Day four years ago. Among those younger than 30, Obama has a 2 to 1 lead over McCain. Among those 30 and older, the candidates are tied. Dianne Amos, 60, an ardent McCain supporter from Logan, is engaged in some intergenerational politicking. In a follow-up interview, she said she is "e-mailing back and forth" with her grandson, an Obama supporter. "I keep trying to explain things to him," she said.

Obama is beating McCain by nearly 3 to 1 in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, and also holds a lead in the northeast portion of the state, an area including the hard-hit industrial cities of Akron, Canton and Youngstown.

McCain's edge in the southwestern part of the state, including Cincinnati and Dayton, is as big as Bush's win was there four years ago, but the Republican nominee's numbers in the central part of the state do not measure up to the president's. Four years ago, Bush won central Ohio and the northwest part of the state around Toledo by eight percentage points. In the Post-ABC News poll, those areas split 49 percent for Obama, 45 percent for McCain.

One clear drag on McCain is the unpopularity of the president. In the most recent Post-ABC national poll, Bush's approval rating stood at 26 percent. Four years ago, both nationally and in Ohio, just over half of all voters gave him positive marks. McCain has sought to portray himself as someone who, with Palin, would reform Washington and change the way business is done in the capital. But in the new poll, more than half of all Ohio voters see McCain as someone who would continue Bush's policies, and nearly all of these voters support Obama.

"Basically, I don't like the Reaganomics of the Republican Party," said Tina Nelson, 27, of Powell, in an interview after the survey. Nelson said an Obama speech on the financial situation "really got to me. It made a lot of sense."

It is the slumping economy that has deeply scrambled voting patterns in the state. The economy was the most important issue in Ohio in 2004, but the Iraq war and terrorism together were cited by as many Ohio voters as were economic concerns, according to a pre-election ABC News poll that year.

Obama wins "economy voters" in the new poll by 62 to 34 percent, and, as noted, more voters prefer him on dealing with the economy (by a 13-point margin), jobs (14 points) and taxes (14 points). And he has an even bigger edge on understanding the financial problems people are facing: Fifty-three percent of voters see him as more in touch on this score, compared with 35 percent who side with McCain.

This advantage on empathy is one of the things that helps Obama among white voters. He has an 11-point edge among that group on this question, and more than 80 percent of those who see him as more in tune support him over McCain.

For Russell Baron, 48, from the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park, McCain cannot compete on the economy. "He's admitted that he doesn't really know much about the economy," he said. "Well, gee, that's a bad thing to say right now."