Vandalia, OH – In the face of recent polls suggesting that President Barack Obama has cinched the lead in two crucial swing states, Mitt Romney and campaign are saying that their own data tells a different story, indeed, a more favorable story for the GOP presidential hopeful. And they’re just going to go with that.
A Washington Post poll showed Tuesday that Mitt Romney is trailing President Obama by eight points in a critical battleground state, with 52 percent of Ohio voters in favor of giving the incumbent another four years. The Romney campaign doesn’t seem terribly bothered by the numbers, saying that the public polls aren’t completely accurate.
“The public polls are what the public polls are,” Romney Political Director Rich Beeson told reporters . “I kind of hope the Obama campaign is basing their campaign on what the public polls say. We don’t. We have confidence in our data and our metrics.”
Beeson didn’t clarify what the Romney camp’s Ohio data showed, but dismissed Obama’s apparent lead in the battleground state.
“I will put our operation up against anybody’s. But at the end of the day, Ohio is going to come down to the wire and we’ll be in it down to the wire and I’m confident that we will win,” Beeson said.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News , Romney’s Ohio chairman Rob Portman was also confident that Romney would win his home state, despite the polls. He said that the Romney team has the edge by mimicking Obama’s 2008 campaign.
“I do think there is a strategy, which the Obama administration is very good at, which is to you know, target particular groups of people and particular regions and you know, the Romney campaign is doing it as well,” Portman said.
A more regional campaign is key to the Romney camp’s plan to take Ohio come November:
“I think that’s one way we’re going to win Ohio, by addressing the issues region by region,” Portman said. “There isn’t just one Ohio. It’s not monolithic.”
Do you believe the national polls? Could Romney win Ohio after all?
