Ohio voters split on Obama re-election, poll finds

Polling released Thursday shows President Obama may need to work hard to win over the key swing state of Ohio in 2012.

Registered Ohio voters this month told Quinnipiac University they are virtually split on whether they would support the president or an unnamed Republican challenger for 2012. Obama receives 41 percent support versus 39 percent support for a GOP candidate. That's a positive shift for the GOP from Quinnipiac's March numbers, which had Obama at 41 percent, but the unnamed Republican challenger at 34 percent.

And voters were also split this month--47 to 47 percent--on whether the president deserves a second term.

Quinnipiac noted in its analysis that Obama received a six-point bounce in their May 5 national poll following the killing of Osama bin Laden. But in Ohio, there was no bounce for the president's job performance.

"In Ohio at least, the question of whether there is a 'bin Laden bounce' apparently has been answered. And the White House can't be happy with the answer," Quinnipiac Polling Institute assistant director Peter A. Brown said in his analysis.

Ohio, a swing state with a large number of electoral votes, will once again play a prominent role in the presidential election. Obama lost Ohio to Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, but he beat John McCain there by 4 percentage points in the general election.

Just this week, the Obama campaign revealed to news outlets that it is building grassroots networks in several swing states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. At the time of Obama's 2008 campaign, all three states had Democratic governors who led grassroots organizations for Obama. But voters in all three states elected a Republican state executive in 2010.

(Photo of Obama: Charles Dharapak/AP)