Politics
Election 2012: Obama launches re-election campaign
Electoral votes are allotted based on the number of seats each state has in both chambers of Congress. Seats in the House of Representatives are based on population, while each state has two senators. State-by-state contests award the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.
Barring a sudden crisis, foreign policy is expected to account for less voter interest than in any presidential campaign since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since taking office, Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to end the war in Iraq, announced a timetable to phase out the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 and given the order for a risky mission by special forces in which al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed in his hideout in Pakistan.
One recent poll showed the public trusts Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney by a margin of 53-36 on international affairs.
While the battleground states tend to be clustered geographically, the state-by-state impact of the recession and economic recovery varies.
In Ohio, for example unemployment was most recently measured at 7.6 percent, below the national average. It was higher, 9.1 percent and rising, when Mr. Obama took office, reaching 10.6 percent in the fall of 2009 before it began receding.
In Virginia, it was 5.6 percent in March, well below the national average. It was 6.6 percent in February 2009 and peaked in June of that year at 7.2.
In a measurement that shows an economy recovering, yet far from recovered, the Labor Department reported this month that 54 metropolitan areas had double-digit unemployment in March, down from 116 a year ago. By contrast, joblessness was below 7.0 percent in 109 areas, up from 62 a year earlier.
