President Obama on Thursday embarks on a bus tour of battleground Ohio, arguably ground zero in the race for the White House and a state where the president is hoping his portrayal of Republican Mitt Romney as an outsourcer of American jobs could carry additional heft.

The Obama campaign has dubbed the Buckeye State trek -- and a trip through Pennsylvania on Friday -- the "Betting on America" tour, a blue-collar pitch that Obama hopes will appeal to a broad swath of Rust Belt voters.

Convincing voters who are struggling with stubbornly high unemployment that they are better off than they were four years ago, though, is the most daunting obstacle to Obama's re-election.

But in Ohio, where the 7.3 percent jobless rate is better the national average and Obama's support for a controversial auto industry bailout has created a more receptive audience, the president may escape the heavy headwinds he faces in other swing states.

"I think this campaign line that Romney is outsourcing jobs will play well for Obama in Ohio, particularly in the areas he'll be traveling to," said Paul Beck, a political scientist at Ohio State University. "Romney, in some ways, is seen as part of the problem -- more so here than other parts of the country."

Obama's bus tour will begin near Toledo and head for an ice cream social at Sandusky's Washington Park before ending the day with a rally in the Cleveland suburb of Parma.

While Obama is touting his efforts to revive the Ohio economy, Romney is left to make a more nuanced argument that, in the end, acknowledges economic gains without giving credit for those gains to Obama.

Like Virginia, another pivotal state that could decide November's election, Ohio is home to a Republican governor who has presided over relatively steady economic growth during Obama's first term.

"When I took office, we were 48th in the country in job creation," Gov. John Kasich said recently on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And in February, working with my partners in the legislature, we were the No. 1 job creator in America, and we're No. 4 today."

With Ohio doing so well, however, Kasich and Romney are forced to argue that Obama's economic policies prevented Ohio from doing even better than it has economically, a message far more difficult to convey than the victory lap Obama is taking.

Romney trails Obama by 2.6 percentage points in Ohio, according to a Real Clear Politics compilation of polling results. But Romney has gained ground amid an avalanche of ads from both campaigns there.

If Romney can build enough support in the conservative bastions of western Ohio to offset the losses he's likely to suffer in the more Democratic eastern part of the state, analysts said Romney could pull out a victory in Ohio. No Republican presidential candidate has ever won the White House without winning Ohio.

To that end, Romney is stepping up his appeals to the same blue-collar voters that Obama is trying to win over, though Romney is claiming Obama has done little or nothing to earn their support.

"After three and a half years of disappointment and broken promises," said Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg, "Americans have been left with an underperforming economy and a manufacturing sector that's hurting."

bhughes@washingtonexaminer.com