In May of 2005, Survey USA polled Ohioans to find the approval/disapproval ratings of the job Bob Taft has done as Governor of Ohio. The result? A horrible 19% were willing to say that they approved of Governor Taft's job. 19%. Not even one in five Ohio voters think Taft is doing a job they can approve of. You wouldn't think it could get much worse. Well, it did.
After enjoying a four point "spike," to 23% in June, Taft's nice little Worker's Comp. scandal is proving to be one hell of an anchor.
Survey USA, today, released the numbers from their tracking polls for each U.S. governor. Our esteemed governor was the worst thought of among his or her constituents in the United States.
Only 17% of Ohio voters approved of Taft's performance; that is fourteen percent less than the second to the lowest on the list (Frank Murkowski, Alaska). 76% of Ohioans polled disapproved -- the highest disapproval rating of any governor by fifteen percent. It's pretty hard to go down from 19%, but Taft did it. The sad thing is, it's about the only thing he's done successfully (and legally) this term.
Going deeper, the encouraging thing for Ohioans is the demographic breakdowns, especially among partisans. Of course Democrats hate Taft; that's a given. The Republicans, though, come close to having just as many disapproving of Taft's performance as Democrats. Republicans disapprove of Taft's performance by a 71 percent to 21 percent margin, and it hardly gets better among conservatives -- 71 percent to 22 percent. His best demographic group is the group of voters 18 to 34 years old -- "only" 66 percent disapprove of his performance.
The Democrats' opportunity in the 2006 elections that should be a dream for any Democratic political consultant managing a state race. The exact statistics don't need to be repeated -- Ohio's economy sucks; we've lost more manufacturing jobs in the last two years than any other state in the nation, and our middle-class ,working families continue to feel squeezed. Time will tell who will step in to take the Democratic nomination, but given this electoral environment, whoever emerges should be thought of as the front-runner in an open seat election. As a University of Akron student has written, "Ohio is on the fast track to hell, and Gov. Bob Taft is the conductor."
Bob Taft's done a horrible job. But shouldn't we all have expected that when we first learned his last name?