Ohio 2012 Poll Finds Narrow Obama Lead

President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney in the presidential contest in Ohio, a new poll has found, but that lead falls within the survey's margin of error.

The survey, released by the Democratic-leaning firm Public Policy Polling, finds Obama leading Romney 47 percent to 44 percent. That lead falls within the poll's 3.8 percentage-point margin of error. Independents in the poll were evenly split, with 42 percent supporting each candidate.

Obama's lead is down from a seven percentage-point advantage in PPP's previous poll, conducted in late April and early May, but that change is small enough to be explained by variation within the polls' margins of error.

Neither Obama nor Romney fare well in popularity in the state. By a 51 percent to 44 percent margin, voters surveyed said they disapproved of Obama's job performance as president, while voters also said they viewed Romney unfavorably, by a 54 percent to 35 percent margin.

According to the survey, picking a native son vice presidential candidate would fail to help Romney in Ohio. PPP tested tickets featuring Sen. Rob Portman, Gov. John Kasich, and House Speaker John Boehner, finding that an Obama-Biden ticket would defeat those tickets by four percentage points, six percantage points and eight percentage points respectively.

The poll was conducted June 21 to June 24 among 673 likely voters in Ohio, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. It was conducted using automated phone polling technology.

The Huffpost Pollster trend estimate of the presidential race in Ohio, which takes into account all publicly available polling of the race, currently has Romney leading the state by less than one percentage point. The last two polls in the state, by the bipartisan strategy group Purple Strategies and by Rasmussen Reports, both using automated phone calls, showed Romney leading the race.