For Ohio residents, yesterday was a rainy, but fruitful day. Troy Smith and the Buckeyes held off a tough Penn State team in Columbus. For Democrats in Ohio, it's a doubly good day, as the
Columbus Dispatch weighed in again on the big races.
Strickland is running away with it, and Brown's got a five point lead.
Why is the governor's mansion in Ohio so important? As much as this Empire State resident likes to call New York the home of Presidents, that title actually goes to the Buckeye State. Ohio has produced
eight, count them eight, presidents from its borders. The strange thing about that fact is that none of them were Democrats (seven Republicans, one Whig).
Ted Strickland currently leads the infamous Kenneth Blackwell by a dominant 52-33 margin. I'll lay twenty bucks on a future Strickland Presidency when he takes the Governor's mansion. Mr. Strickland possesses that magical combination for a candidacy for the high office: He is a solid progressive AND a priest. It's a sad state of affairs when you need some sort of religious cred to gain points with the voters, but Strickland's got more of that than Blackwell, or just about any Republican, can ever dream to have. Barring an event so shady to the point that someone in a coma could recognize the shenanigans, Strickland is in.
Sherrod Brown has successfuly turned his "liberal" positions into "populist" planks, and that's given him a 47-42 lead over faux-moderate Mike DeWine. Two notable points to take from the internals:
1. The sample showed President Bush with 335 more votes in 2004 than John Kerry. Many of these are probably union-workers, normally economically progressive but socially conservative voters who were put off for some reason by Kerry. Brown has appealed to the large union population, building a 25 point lead among this bloc. As long as this trend continues, it is fatal for DeWine.
2. Brown leads among Catholics and trails among Protestants by less than ten points. Brown has managed to keep many anti-abortion Catholics in his column. His goal is to keep DeWine under 50% among Protestants, many of them evangelicals. Brown's success here means DeWine is toast on Election Day.
The Columbus-Dispatch poll cements the fact that Republicans have a big uphill climb in Ohio. It is the gold-standard of polling in this state. The referenced poll has a margin of error of only 2.2%, meaning they obtain a more representative sample of the state than any other polling outfit. Combine these results with the next best Ohio polling outfit, the Cincinnati University poll and you can see things are looking up for the Democrats for the first time in a while.