Washington:
President Barack Obama holds a slight lead over his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, in key swing states that could determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential race, a new opinion poll found.
The USA Today/Gallup survey showed Obama ahead of Romney 47 per cent to 45 per cent among registered voters.
The states covered by the poll included Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Swing states are usually not firmly or predictably aligned with either Democrats or Republicans and as such, in many instances can determine the outcome of national races.
In the rest of the country, Obama led Romney 48 per cent to 44 per cent, the survey said yesterday.
The poll of 2,404 registered voters was conducted on June 22-29 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.