Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s reelection chances appear all but certain, as his lead over Democratic candidate, former Gov. Ted Strickland, has surged into double digits. Trump has also surged in the Buckeye State, and Guy provided his analysis of the issue earlier this morning.
AND modern CNN/ORC poll Portman led Strickland with Ohio’s likely and registered voters 58/37 and 56/38, respectively. That’s a 20-point lead at this point, which is why the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee he put a blockade in TV ads for the failing Democrat. The Bloomberg-sponsored Selzer & Co. poll also brought bad news for Team Strickland. J. Ann Selzer is considered one of the nation’s top pollsters, though she was humbled by the Iowa primary results. Still, she added that the Ohio electorate seems to be more reflective of what we saw in 2004; a good sign for Republicans (via Cleveland.com):
…the poll also showed Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman leading Democratic rival Ted Strickland, a former governor, 53 percent to 36 percent.
“Our partisan breakdown is different from other polls, but it is similar to what happened in Ohio in 2004,” J. Ann Selzer, whose Iowa-based firm oversaw the poll, said in a statement. “It is very difficult to tell today who will and who will not show up to vote on Election Day. Our polling suggests that more Republicans than Democrats would do so in an Ohio election held today, as they did in 2004, when George W. Bush won the state by a narrow margin. In 2012, more Democrats showed up.”
The results are notable for two reasons. First, Trump’s 5-point lead in Ohio is his largest this year and caps a run of recent polls that have diverged from Clinton, who has consistently maintained a slim lead over Trump in polls conducted here. Trump is likely to be at least partly a beneficiary of the customary tightening of the race that comes after Labor Day, when voters typically start paying more attention to the election.
Second, the poll suggests that, barring anything unexpected, Portman is well on her way to a unthreatening reelection. It’s the second consecutive Ohio poll to show Portman with a double-digit lead over Strickland. By comparison, polls at this point in the 2012 race showed Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown trailing his Republican rival, state Treasurer Josh Mandel, by an average of 6 percentage points. Brown ultimately won by 5 points.
That 17-point lead is especially striking given that political observers initially considered the U.S. Senate race in Ohio to be one of the closest in the country.
One area that seems to limit Strickland is that women don’t seem to be there for him. Portman and Strickland are drawing equal support among women in the state, with Portman winning narrowly, with an advantage among men. That’s similar to the demographic split in the 2014 Kentucky Senate race between Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes. Both were tied with women, but McConnell’s 10-point lead among men in the Bluegrass State allowed him to maintain his lead. Ultimately, Grimes was crushed. Here’s the result of a Quinnipiac poll on the gender split in the Ohio race (via Cincinnati/USA Today):
In a Quinnipiac University poll, 51 percent of respondents said they supported Portman, while 40 percent supported Strickland.
“Former Gov. Ted Strickland faces defeat at the hands of Senator Rob Portman,” Quinnipiac said in its press release announcing the results.
One key problem with Strickland: He’s not taking advantage of the typical “gender gap” in which female voters tend to lean toward Democratic candidates. Instead, the poll shows 46 percent of women supporting Portman, compared with 45 percent for Strickland. Male voters support Portman over Strickland by a wide margin — 57 percent to 33 percent.
Quinnipiac surveyed 775 likely voters in Ohio and the results had a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.
But a modern CNN/ORC poll shows Portman winning among women, with a 51/39 split among likely voters. What’s more, Portman appears to be winning almost everywhere in the state.
It’s no wonder Republicans hope to keep the Senate It has increasedand the Democrats seem a little worried about that they won’t be able to finalize the deal.
The Senate elections were supposed to be tough, given the compact number of picks Democrats needed to retake the chamber. In addition to the Trump factor (he was scattered around Cleveland), Republicans were defending Senate seats in states Obama had won twice. Those were prime areas for Democrats to add to their majority. This was supposed to be a tough year, although I originally thought Trump would be a drag on our shoulders. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
