A USA Today/Gallup poll released today shows that the Obama campaign has been far more successful than Romney's at swaying voters in swing states with their campaign ads.
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At this point, Obama is the clear winner in the ad wars. Among swing-state voters who say the ads have changed their minds about a candidate, rather than just confirmed what they already thought, 76% now support the president, vs. 16% favoring Romney.
Most of those ads have taken aim at Romney's record of outsourcing and destroying companies in his time at Bain Capital.
But all the ads have not been negative in nature.
Messina also credits a $25 million buy for a positive ad "about the challenges the president inherited and what we had to do to move this country forward."
Of course, one of the great caveats here is that the Romney side may be holding their powder a bit, and may be waiting to unleash its torrents of anti-Obama ads in the near future.
Obama and his allies have outspent Romney's side on ads so far by almost a third. Although the TV spots didn't start earlier than in recent elections, there have been more than ever before — including a negative flood from the new breed of super PACs — and they are continuing without the traditional summertime letup.
The more worrisome note is that, even with Obama's effective ads, he leads Romney by a mere two points in the swing states.
In the 12 battleground states, the race is all but tied. Obama leads Romney 47%-45% among 1,200 registered voters in the poll June 22-29 — a tick closer than Obama's 48%-44% lead among 2,404 voters in the rest of the USA over the same period.
On the other hand, take a look at what one resident of Iowa had to say:
Their target: voters like Jessica Bruning, 28, of Holstein, Iowa.
"I don't get a chance to see the news a lot," Bruning, who was called in the USA TODAY Poll, said in a follow-up phone interview. "I have two kids and go to school and work. Seeing the ads every day helps me catch up. I see what they are going to do."
What has she learned? That Obama has been pushing to keep student loan rates low — she's attending community college to be certified as a welder, so that's an important issue for her — and that Romney "wants to cut taxes for the rich people and raise them for the poor."
"I don't think that's cool," she says. She plans to vote for Obama.
There's still a long way to go, but this is a good start.