Bad News For Democrats In The Buckeye State
Ohio has long been a bellwethers state and, if a new statewide poll is any indication, it looks to be ready to hand the Democrats a very bad defeat in November.
Ohio has been a bellwether state for many years now, and if a new Columbus Dispatch poll is any indication, it looks to be ready to give some bad news to Democrats this year:
Republican candidates have grabbed double-digit leads in the races for governor and the U.S. Senate, and the swelling red tide could lead to a GOP sweep of statewide offices, the first Dispatch Poll of the 2010 campaign shows.
With voter enthusiasm running nearly three times higher among Republicans than Democrats, GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich leads by 12 points over Gov. Ted Strickland while GOP Senate hopeful Rob Portman tops Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher by 13 points.
(…)
Republican candidates lead for all down-ticket statewide offices on the Nov.2 ballot: former U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine for attorney general, Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost for auditor, state Sen. Jon Husted for secretary of state, state Rep. Josh Mandel for treasurer, Justice Maureen O’Connor for chief justice and Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger for re-election.
The mail survey of 1,622 randomly chosen registered Ohio voters from Aug. 25 through Friday has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
And, as we’ve seen in nationwide polls, there’s far more enthusiasm among Republicans than Democrats:
Because the campaigns for everything except governor and U.S. Senate likely have been all-but-invisible to most Ohio voters, it’s presumably the Republican label that is carrying the day for now.
The supporters of every statewide GOP candidate are two to three times as likely as those who are backing the Democratic candidate to say they are more enthused than usual for this year’s election.
(…)
The party label is key to respondent David Murray, 54, a telecommunication technician and union member from Dayton, who is voting a straight Republican ticket.
“Regretfully, this current crop of Democrats has repeatedly proven themselves, almost without exception, untrustworthy of the power associated with their offices,” he said.
If Republicans end up winning all the statewide contests, it would match the GOP “three-peat sweep” of 1994, 1998 and 2002 and return Ohio to the all-Republican rule that the state experienced from 1995 through 2006. Just four years ago, Democrats won every statewide nonjudicial race except auditor.
Such an outcome also would give the GOP control again of the state Apportionment Board, which redraws legislative districts, and thus an upper hand in General Assembly races for the next decade.
As well as, of course, the drawing of Congressional Districts since Ohio is likely to lose a Congressional seat after the results of this year’s census.
While it’s only one state, Ohio has long been indicative of what happens in the nation as a whole, as well as the rest of the MidWest. There were many who thought that, with the decline of manufacturing and the rise in unemployment, Republican chances in the Buckeye State were lost for a decade or more. It’s funny what a bad economy and a national Democratic Party that is as clueless as it’s predecessor can do.
Given that Rasmussen, with its well-known GOP bias, has a GOP advantage in the two state-wide races only half the size of the Columbus Dispatch polls, I wouldn’t place a lot of stock in the latter.
Who does mail-in polls anyway? What kind of sample biases would that introduce? Seriously, why would you design a poll that would select for people who have the time or interest in opening what appears to be junk mail, filling out a form, and wasting a stamp sending it in? The population of people who would do such a thing is, I would contend, a non-random sample of the population at large.
Whistling in the dark, Tano?
I mean if there was a substantial disagreement around (At least in all but the far left faithful) you might have a point. As it is, your exercise in trying to create your own reality is noted with amusement.
“Who does mail-in polls anyway? What kind of sample biases would that introduce?”
That’s the way they vote in Oregon, and it’s getting popular all over! [lol]
@Tano,
Your problem is that PPP showed the same advantage as the evil Rasmussen.
@ Tano
Given that Rasmussen, with its well-known GOP bias, has a GOP advantage in the two state-wide races only half the size of the Columbus Dispatch polls, I wouldn’t place a lot of stock in the latter.
Yeah, those grapes were probably sour anyway…
Tano, I was readying a response until I read the others. Guess you need no more humiliation.
Pete,
Please share.
As for “humiliation”, where would that come from?
I responder just imagines I am whistling in the dark, which is pretty much a nothing statement, since no one knows how things will turn out, so it may as well be applicable to him as to me. Another notes that PPP agrees with Rasmussen, which is entirely besides the point since the issue was with a Columbus Dispatch poll, and I actually raised the Ras poll as being less of an outlier.
The only semi-substantive response was one that noted that Oregon has mail-in voting. OF course, that addresses neither the voting methods of Ohio, nor the central issue of whether a mail-in POLL will yield a random sample of the electorate. My claim is that it does not. No one seems to take issue with that – so if my claim stands, then my further claim that the poll is meaningless also stands.
If you have something to contribute, please do, because I don’t really see anything of real substance on offer yet.