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compared to 37 percent who said Obama would. In 2008, McCain and Obama were tied at 40 percent on that question.
• The one area where Obama held an advantage was "addressing the needs and concerns of women."
• The poll also showed that these voting preferences are not likely to be swayed by much: Just 4 percent of respondents said they were undecided or considering third-party candidates.
• The caveat for Romney, however, is that the percentage of the population that is rural in these battleground states is not a majority. The percent of the population that is rural ranges from 39.7 percent in New Hampshire down to just 5.8 percent in Nevada. Romney is going to have to pull in many urban voters as well to get over 50 percent in these states--and while statewide poll results have varied, Obama currently seems to have a lead in all but North Carolina and Florida.
• The rural part of the population has been decreasing in battleground states right along with the percentage of the rural population nationwide. The national rural population dropped from 24.8 percent to 19.3 percent from 1990 to 2010, according to U.S. Census data.
• All of the battleground states in the poll also dropped the percentage of the rural population during those two decades. North Carolina had the greatest difference, with almost 50 percent rural in 1990 and 33.9 percent rural in 2010; Colorado changed the least, with 17.7 percent rural in 1990 and 5.8 percent rural in 2010.
• (The rural population dropped from 47 percent to 40 percent of the total population of North Dakota, and from 50 percent to 43 percent of the population of South Dakota, from 1990 to 2010. That move toward urbanization hasn't made the Dakotas any less red on electoral maps: According to  FiveThirtyEight, a column written by statistician Nate Silver that analyzes electoral probabilities using advanced statistics, as of Sept. 24, Romney's chances of taking North and South Dakota are 98.8 and 98.4 percent, respectively.)
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