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Tuesday, May 22, 2012 6:15 PM UTC

Polls show presidential race tightening

With five months until the election, new polls show the candidates in a dead heat

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Topics: From the Wires, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama,

Polls show presidential race tighteningMissouri Gov. Jay Nixon, left, and Joplin Superintendent of Schools C.J. Huff, right, flank President Barack Obama as he takes the stage to deliver the Joplin High School commencement address a day before the anniversary of the twister that killed 161 people, Monday, May 21, 2012, in Joplin, Mo. Obama jetted to Joplin immediately after wrapping up the national security-focused NATO conference in Chicago, the second international summit the president hosted over the past four days. (AP Photo/The Kansas City Star, Shane Keyser)(Credit: AP)

With about five months to go, the presidential race is tightening, polls show, with voters nearly evenly divided between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, his likely Republican challenger.

Obama and Romney are locked in a dead heat over handling the economy, the top concern of voters, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows. They are tied at 47 percent.

Overall, 49 percent said they back Obama for re-election and 46 percent preferred Romney, a statistically insignificant difference.

Other recent national polls show a similarly close margin.

Earlier polls generally showed the former Massachusetts governor holding a slight lead over Obama on economic issues and Obama slightly ahead overall.

But the tightening follows an aggressive attack on Romney’s business credentials by the Obama campaign, including ads painting him as a job-destroying corporate raider at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he co-founded.

Romney called the attacks “character assassination.” But Obama defended the tactic on Monday as legitimate and suggested Romney’s background was a poor qualification for the White House since being president involves more than “maximizing profits.”

Still, some prominent Democratic supporters have expressed discomfort with the attacks, including former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr., former Obama economic adviser Steve Rattner and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Booker said he found attack ads from both sides “nauseating.” However, he later said Romney’s business record was fair game.

With U.S. unemployment still hovering above 8 percent and economic uncertainty widespread, both candidates have stepped up their emphasis on jobs and the economy.

Romney was fund raising in New York with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and had no public appearances. Obama was at the White House also with no public appearances scheduled.

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Associated Press News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

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Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum. For more AP political coverage, look for the 2012 Presidential Race in AP Mobile’s Big Stories section. Also follow https://twitter.com/APCampaign and AP journalists covering the campaign: https://twitter.com/AP/ap-campaign-2012.

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Tom Raum

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