Swing State

Newspaper subscribers are accustomed to the sample-size boxes of laundry detergent or aspirin bottles that sometimes arrive packaged with their morning paper, courtesy of advertisers. But readers in battleground states are getting a different kind of freebie: the DVD of a controversial documentary on Islam.

INDIANOLA, Iowa - Friday was senior night at Indianola High School, the Indians set to play the Lincoln Railsplitters in the last home game of the season. First, though, came a dose of tradition, celebratory and sweet. Every football player, cheerleader, cross-country runner and band member poised to graduate in spring marched down the track, their names and plans called out over the public address system as the shivering crowd cheered. Bob Kling did the honors for the marching band's seniors: Samantha Barth, Central College, pre-med … Hannah Hayden, Concordia University, Christian education … Travis Huss, undecided.

BOCA RATON, Fla. - With the debates behind them, President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney launched themselves Tuesday into a final sprint across the half a dozen or so states that will probably decide which of the two claims the White House on Nov. 6. Obama released a glossy booklet offering his plans for a second term, which he touted in a TV ad claiming progress after four years of middling economic growth. "It's an honor to be your president," Obama said, looking evenly into the camera, "and I'm asking for your vote.

CINCINNATI - In battleground states across the country, President Obama and Mitt Romney pressed voters to their sides Thursday, with the incumbent arguing that he was the candidate voters could trust and the challenger insisting that he represented needed change. With election day less than two weeks away, their campaigning crackled with urgency. Obama continued on a nonstop two-day tour of several battleground states, moving from Nevada overnight to Florida in the morning, and later to Virginia, Illinois - where he voted - and on to Ohio.

In this former company town, an aging smokestack marked with "Hoover" in tall white letters stands like a tombstone over the union jobs lost when the vacuum-cleaner factory shut down in 2007. The decision to shutter an icon of America's industrial heyday, made by the company's new Hong Kong owners, was another step in labor's relentless slide in a state once known as a union stronghold. Now, organized labor is facing an existential test in Ohio, a showdown with implications for next year's presidential election.

WASHINGTON - A hard-hitting commercial blasting President Obama's stimulus spending as a "failure" flooded television sets last week in eight swing states that will be decisive in November's presidential election. It was not the product of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, nor of the national Republican Party. Instead, it was made by Americans for Prosperity, a Virginia-based nonprofit that for months has poured millions into anti-Obama commercials. Its latest buy totaled $6.1 million in airtime.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - Vice President Joe Biden and unofficial Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney skirmished over the economy and their ability to improve it in swing-state appearances Wednesday that underscored each side's positioning on the key issue in November's general election. Biden and other Democrats are seeking to disqualify Romney in the minds of voters as an alternative to President Obama. Polls consistently have found that voters give Romney better marks for his potential handling of the economy than they give Obama for dealing with it. Romney and other Republicans have long criticized the president's moves on the economy.

LAS VEGAS - In three days of campaign travel this last week, President Obama spent just two hours on the soil of a battleground state - a small fraction of his time given that voters in those places are expected to decide the election. Instead, Obama rubbed elbows with wealthy donors in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. They hadn't shelled out $20,000 apiece just to cheer and watch him from a distance at a big rally. For years, the complaint in donor-rich states, including New York, Illinois and California, has been that presidential candidates take them for granted and seldom show up to campaign.

MANSFIELD, Ohio -- Mitt Romney touched down in Ohio on Monday just long enough to fire up a crowd with a full-throated attack on President Obama's economic policies and then promised to return. "We'll be back a lot to Ohio," he assured one woman after his speech at a machine tool plant in Ohio's Republican heartland. Polls show Obama leading in Ohio, a key battleground state in the November election. Romney delivered his standard stump speech to a crowd estimated at about 1,200 people, beginning with a parsing of the Pledge of Allegiance that allows him to contrast his vision with that of Obama's on issues that include the deficit, military spending and the place of God in American life.

A new Gallup poll shows that President Obama has opened up his largest lead over Mitt Romney to date, both nationally and among voters in a dozen key November battlegrounds. Obama's 51% to 42% lead among registered voters in 12 "swing states" is his first over Romney in the USA Today/Gallup poll . Romney led in those states 48% to 46% in the previous survey in mid-February. Driving that advantage is a significant gender gap. The two are statistically tied among men, with Romney's 48% to 47% lead within the margin of error.