We're winning the race, says team Obama

Barack Obama's re-election campaign team boasted on Sunday that it was winning the race against Mitt Romney with six weeks remaining until election day despite polls showing a dead heat.

In unusually bullish statements after Romney's most difficult week of the campaign so far, Obama's team taunted the Republican challenger with polling data from crucial battleground states.

"The President is winning, and winning in the swing states," former President Bill Clinton said in a television interview. Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, told reporters: "We're either tied or in the lead in every battleground state."

The candidates are locked in a virtual tie in the polls, with Gallup yesterday putting national support for both men at 47%.

But Obama leads in the 10 states set to decide the Nov 6 election, thanks to America's electoral college system.

Amid sharp and mounting criticism from fellow Republicans over his faltering White House bid, Romney last night rejected suggestions that he needed to overhaul his campaign for its final phase. "It doesn't need a turnaround," he said in a television interview. "There are some days we're up. There are some days we're down. We've got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent president."

Aides to Obama urged voters to ignore national polls, which they claim are skewed by emphatic support for Romney in safe Republican states that will not decide the overall result.

"What I care way more about is Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin," said Messina. "In those states, I feel our pathways to victory are there."

Romney and Paul Ryan, his running mate, this week embark on a bus tour of Ohio, a perennial bellwether state where they trail Obama by 4.1 points, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls. A loss there would severely restrict the Republicans' potential paths to victory.

Romney has been scrambling for the past week to limit the damage to his prospects among poorer voters caused by secretly-recorded footage of him telling wealthy donors that 47 per cent of Americans were government-dependent "victims" refusing to take responsibility for their lives.

In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, Romney last night rejected claims that it reflected deeper problems with his campaign team.

"That's not the campaign. That was me," he said. "The campaign organisation is doing a very good job. But not everything I say is elegant."

The Republicans also came under fire from Clinton for their efforts in several states to strengthen voters' identification requirements and limiting the periods in which ballots can be cast.

The former president accused the party of working hard to limit turnout among "young people and first generation immigrants and minorities", the groups who largely backed Obama when he was elected in 2008.

In a speech to a gala dinner for black members of Congress, Obama's wife, Michelle, described voter-registration as "the movement of our era" and urged resistance to efforts to restrict it.