A new poll of likely Ohio voters shows the Presidential and U.S. Senate races are in a virtual dead heat. Eric Rademacher of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Pll says the Senate race between incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown and challenger Josh Mandel - and the contest between President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney - are within the survey's margin of error.
Rademacher: 49% support Barack Obama, 46% support Mitt Romney, and about 4% either are undecided in the race or are supporting another candidate. When we asked about the Senate race, we found 48% say they support Sherrod Brown, 46% of likely voters currently support Josh Mandel, and 6% are either undecided or don't know who they'll vote for in the race.
Rademacher says a large block of the 847 likely Ohio voters surveyed could still be swayed before election day.
Rademacher: Before the real influx of fall campaigning begins, there's still about 20% of voters in total who either might change their mind or just haven't decided how they're going to vote this year in these two races. so once again in Ohio, as the candidates start to really embark on full campaigns, there are a large number of votes up for grabs that could decide these two races.
Rademacher says both polls show the Democratic incumbents enjoy large leads among African-American and women voters as well as with people making less than 30-thousand dollars a year. The Republican challengers enjoy large leads among male voters and with people making more than 70-thousand dollars a year. The margin of error is three percentage points.