WASHINGTON — Two months before the election, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney agree on one thing: the collection of states where the race will be decided.
As Obama opened a two-day bus tour of Florida on Saturday, Romney set his sights on trying to put Virginia back in the Republican column. Television advertisements from both sides filled the airwaves in those two vital states and six others — from Nevada to New Hampshire — while outside groups supporting the candidates tested for traction elsewhere.
With the political conventions over, the battle to determine whether Obama will win re-election or Romney will become the 45th president of the United States is fully engaged. The race has been deadlocked, according to many measures, and each side was predicting that it would see no lift from its convention.
That seems to have been true in Romney’s case, while Obama’s aides were hopeful that new polls due out this week would prove them wrong.
But, for now, Obama might hold a slight edge because the race remains essentially tied, which means voter disappointment has not turned into a resounding call for his defeat despite the challenging economic climate.
“Now, our friends at the other convention were more than happy to talk about what was wrong with America but not talking about what they’d do to make it right,” he told supporters Saturday in Seminole, Fla., a few miles from the site of the Republican convention.
Romney, speaking to veterans in Virginia Beach on Saturday, referred to the disappointing jobs report released a day earlier.
“This week has not been a lot of good news,” he said. “But I’m here to tell you things are about to get a lot better.”
The roster of battleground states has not changed much, but one that Republicans had dearly hoped to put in play appears to have broken decisively: Pennsylvania. Romney spent time and money in the state, which went Democratic in the past five presidential elections, but Republican strategists now say it seems out of reach.
Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes and is home to Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, might offer Romney the best chance to expand his options. Republicans have not won there since 1984, despite fighting hard in almost every election.
Wisconsin was not one of the eight states where the Romney campaign placed its first flight of general-election ads late last week, but one party strategist said, “Keep watching.”
At this point in the campaign, Romney had hoped to put at least a few more states into safer Republican territory. North Carolina, which Obama narrowly carried in 2008, is at the top of the list. But the state is still competitive enough that Romney and Republican groups feel compelled to keep spending on advertising there, complicating their hopes of making Wisconsin and Michigan more competitive.
Some Democratic strategists say winning Florida remains a reach for Obama, but his visit this weekend suggests that the White House has not given up and at a minimum will make Romney spend a lot more time and money there.
And Democrats say they are happily surprised by polls showing Obama running strong in Ohio, whose working-class voters have been exposed to heavy advertising portraying Romney as a job killer.
The Obama campaign sent Vice President Joe Biden to Zanesville, Ohio, on Saturday.
Ryan was dispatched to California, for a Saturday evening fundraiser in Fresno, a rare departure from the battleground states dominating the campaign itinerary.
