President Barack Obama is flying back from the Pacific leg of his 2012 campaign, and will quickly jet out again for New Hampshire to tout his proposed stimulus on Tuesday.
The Granite State fly-in, presumably aboard the 225-ton Air Force One, will put Obama in the small but important swing state two days after former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney holds a Sunday rally at Nashua’s city hall.
Romney is also slated to give a Monday morning speech in a nearby high-tech weapons factory.
The visit may be intended to repair Obama’s poll numbers in New Hampshire, whose four electoral votes may prove vital to an Obama come-from-behind re-election victory. A November poll showed Romney at 50 percent and Obama at 40 percent.
That’s bad for Obama, especially because undecided voters usually vote against incumbents. Obama won the support of 54 percent of them in 2008.
The poll of 500 residents, including 342 voters, was conducted by Bloomberg News.
The White House announcement of the trip said the president intends to tout his American Jobs Act. He will give a speech at Central High School in Manchester.
The jobs bill, which would aim to spur the 2012 economy with a $446 billion, one-year, deficit-financed stimulus, faces strong GOP opposition in Congress.
Only small portions of the bill are likely to be signed into law, but the proposal helps Obama portray himself as an energetic and caring leader while also claiming that congressional Republicans are putting “party before country.”