Motor workers favour Obama after bailout Ever since Jeff Klayo introduced Barack Obama at a fundraising event in April, he has asked fellow members of the United Auto Workers union at Chrysler's Sterling Heights plant, near Detroit, to show their support for the president once a week. "Every Tuesday, I've challenged the people here at the plant to make sure that we wear our Obama T-Shirts," he says. It's for awareness that this is an important election - to make sure we choose the right candidate that supports our interests. Mr Klayo's initiative is one of thousands by the UAW's 390,000 members in an election campaign where Mr Obama's government-led bailout of Chrysler and General Motors may prove to be his trump card. The bailout could be decisive in delicately-poised Ohio, where the union claims 43,000 active members, according to David Cohen, professor of political science at the university of Akron. Whoever wins Ohio is likely to win the election and Mr Obama's polls in the state have persistently run a little ahead of his national average. "I think it's just a big net positive for the president that the UAW is firmly backing him," Professor Cohen says. The potential for the auto bailout to sway a few decisive votes in Ohio has led to a bruising political battle about the effects of the auto bailout and potential alternatives. John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio and a surrogate for challenger Mitt Romney in the state, plays down the role of the bailout in its economic recovery. "We're outperforming every other state in the Midwest," he said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. And if the auto bailout is significant, why is it that we're so significantly outperforming Michigan? Mr Romney's campaign has tried a range of attacks to undermine the political benefit to Mr Obama from the bailout. It has highlighted the plight of non-union workers at auto parts supplier Delphi, who argue that the bailout cost them their pensions while unionised workers were protected, and released an advert implying that bailed out Chrysler will shift production of the Jeep to China. Chrysler, like the other Detroit carmakers, has worked hard to avoid being drawn into the election controversy but has vehemently denied that plans to consider restarting some Jeep production in China mean that all production would leave north America. "Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China," wrote Gualberto Ranieri, head of communications, on the company's website. Mr Kasich is correct in that the auto industry has recovered slowly: production last year was 13.4m vehicles compared with 15-16m before the recession. But what the bailout did was prevent a ripple of bankruptcies up and down the auto supply chain, and across banks that held car industry debt, which could have made the recession much worse. "Without financial help from the federal government, all three domestic vehicle producers and many of their suppliers might have had to liquidate many operations, with devastating effects on the broader economy, and especially on the Midwest," argue Mark Zandi, of Moody's Analytics, and Alan Blinder, of Princeton University, in their analysis of economic policy during the recession. For the election what matters is whether those who have jobs in the auto industry give credit to Mr Obama. In Sterling Heights, feelings run particularly high, because the plant was threatened with closure after Chrysler's collapse into bankruptcy in 2009. It has instead added a second shift and more jobs, when demand for cars bounced back and the US industry's products became more competitive. Bob King, president of the UAW, says voters in car-making areas appreciate how Mr Obama overcame widespread opposition to the bailout to keep the big carmakers going. "I think people know he's a strong leader," Mr King says. I think that's a big reason why he'll get re-elected. In some conservative parts of Ohio, UAW members may still vote Republican over social issues, Mr King concedes. But he expects the Democrats" support for the bailout to keep such numbers low. Mr Klayo is a good example of the phenomenon. He has, he says, voted in the past for Republican candidates whom he saw as strong on national security. But he would "always" vote for Mr Obama. "Obama has given me hope," he says. He made a bold move that helped save the auto industry.