The president could lose Ohio, lose Florida, and still win re-election.

But losing Pennsylvania on election day 2012 would be a decisive blow against his chances of winning:

President Barack Obama, who political experts say will need a win in Pennsylvania to retain the White House, dipped to 35 percent approval among the state's registered voters, according to a Muhlenberg College poll released Friday.

The results come on the heels of a bad week in polls for Obama that showed him first dropping to 39 percent nationwide in Gallup's daily tracking poll. Then another set of Gallup results Thursday showed only 26 percent of Americans approve of how Obama is handling the economy.

These numbers are a huge blow to Obama who won the state handily in 2008, and a significant drop in just a few weeks from when Quinnipiac University polled Pennsylvania voters and found the president with 43 percent job approval.

The industrial heartland is one, collective ghost town. Those jobs are not coming back, but will need to be replaced. This is something both Republicans and Democrats have not dealt with yet as the full impact of the recession is still working its way through the economy.

Obviously, voters don't want to hear that ther factory jobs are gone for good so both sides pretend otherwise. It may not save Obama in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, or Wisconsin  if polls in those states are correct.