Obama leads Romney in crucial states President Barack Obama has taken a commanding lead over Mitt Romney, his Republican rival for the White House, in three swing states, according to a new poll published on Wednesday. With the crucial battlegrounds holding the key to the election, the findings will add to impressions that Mr Obama's re-election campaign has the momentum while Mr Romney's campaign is struggling. Mr Obama "is over the magic 50 per cent mark" in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, according to pollsters at Quinnipiac University. He has a 10-point lead among likely voters in Ohio, where both candidates were campaigning on Wednesday, with 53 per cent. In Florida he is nine points ahead, also with 53 per cent, while in Pennsylvania the president holds a commanding 12-point lead, with 54 per cent support according to the poll, which was conducted for CBS News and the New York Times. No presidential candidate since 1960 has won the White House without taking at least two of those three states. Pennsylvania had been considered in play until recently, when Mr Romney's campaign and its supporters apparently gave up on the state, stopping all advertising there. Furthermore, voters in each state see Mr Obama as better than Mr Romney at handling the economy, healthcare, Medicare, national security, an international crisis and immigration. However, the Republican candidate ties or inches ahead of the president on handling the budget deficit. Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said that the results came after a "bad week" for Mr Romney and were "almost certainly" linked to his controversial remarks that 47 per cent of Americans are "victims" who depend on some sort of welfare. "The wide difference between the two candidates is not just a result of Romney's bad week," Mr Brown added. The president's strength results from the fact that for the first time in the entire campaign, he is seen as better able to fix the economy than is Romney, the issue that has been the Republican's calling card since the general election campaign began. And the economy remains the overwhelming choice as the most important issue to voters" presidential choice." The findings gel with other recent polls showing Mr Obama gaining a meaningful lead over Mr Romney. The Real Clear Politics average of polls gives the president a 3.7 per cent lead nationwide. Another poll found that public criticism of Mr Romney has risen sharply, with a majority unimpressed by his comments about the "47 per cent." Fifty-four per cent of people surveyed by Langer Research Associates in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll viewed the comments negatively, while one-third responded favourably. The remainder were unsure. Amid renewed scrutiny of Mr Romney's team, 61 per cent said they held an unfavourable view of the candidate's campaign, up 12 points since mid-July. Far fewer, 35 per cent, rated Mr Romney's performance positively, essentially unchanged. With polls showing that the public is unimpressed with Mr Romney's campaign and Washington news outlets are abuzz with reports of infighting, Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr Romney's campaign, said they had a "no whining rule" about media coverage. "We have a no whining rule in Boston about coverage in the media," Mr Gillespie told Fox and Friends on Wednesday. We just deal with the facts. Republicans have long complained that the "liberal media" is biased towards Democrats, and some also accuse pollsters of the same bias.