The Next Hurrah: Color Ohio Blue This Year

October 17, 2006

Color Ohio Blue This Year

Kos (at Daily Kos) notes DeWine's problems in the OH Senate race here . That's the micro look. The macro look finds troubles growing by the day in Ohio. From the new NY Times/CBS poll:

The bellwether state of Ohio appears to have become hostile terrain for Republicans this year, with voters there overwhelmingly saying Democrats are more likely to help create jobs and concluding by a wide margin that Republicans in the state are more prone to political corruption than are Democrats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll...

The results raise alarm bells for President Bush and his party across the nation three weeks from Election Day.

The poll found a striking slippage in the president's standing among white evangelical Christians, a constituency that has provided a strong vote cushion for Republican candidates in recent elections. In November 2004, 76 percent of white evangelical Christians in Ohio voted for Mr. Bush. When asked in this poll whether they approve or disapprove of the job Mr. Bush is doing as president, 49 percent approved while 45 percent disapproved.

Those of you looking for evidence that the so-called values voters have issues with the GOP (also documented in other polls, and Jon Meacham's Newsweek reporting) can find it right here. On the other hand, the economy matters in Ohio just about more than anywhere else (and in Ohio, more even than the civil war in Iraq). A ballot item on minimum wage should favor Dem GOTV:

A plurality, 46 percent of Ohio voters, said the economy and jobs were the most important issues facing the state, while 17 percent cited health care, 15 percent said terrorism and 12 percent said the war in Iraq. Seventy percent said both Ohio and the nation are on the wrong track, a number that often spells doom for the party in power.

More than three-quarters of Ohioans in the poll said they strongly favored a ballot measure to increase the state minimum wage to $6.85 an hour from $5.15 an hour. The ballot measure is backed by labor unions and other Democratic interests and is aimed in part at drawing Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day, just as measures to outlaw gay marriage propelled Republicans to vote in several states two years ago.

The bottom line:

Only a third of Ohio voters approve of the job Mr. Bush is doing as president or the way he is handling the economy, and they seem poised to take it out on Republican candidates up and down the ballot. Republican officials at the national level said this week they had all but written off the Ohio Senate and governor's races and were diverting resources to other states where they believed they had a better chance of winning.

There's a snowball effect that may be too early to see in the micro look at the House polls (DeWine's Senate polls shown below look awful), but the macro look shows evidence of the wave. The Republicans will have to look elsewhere than Ohio for their "firewall", and "close races" in the House in Ohio ought to give the GOP nightmares.

October 17, 2006 at 19:34 in Contributor--DemFromCT, Elections--2006, Polls | Permalink

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The Next Hurrah

October 17, 2006

Color Ohio Blue This Year

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