OH-PPP: Obama @ 44% approval, leads Republicans by at least 2%

[TJ in Oregon]

There are and there are always will be more registered Democrats than Republicans in polls of most states as the Republican Party is more ideologically purist and does not feature as many moderates as the Democrats.  It is more important with polls to look at how they identify ideologically:

41% Conservative
31% Moderate
27% Liberal

This is a correct sample.  If you stupidly adjusted it on party ID, that would turn it into a majority conservative sample.  A place that elects Sherrod Brown as its Senator is not a majority conservative state.

It seems a little high on the number of liberals and a little low on the number of moderates. If I remember correctly, the Gallup ID poll had Ohio at 19% liberal and only a handful of states at 27% liberal or higher. It's hard to say whether this changes the results a whole lot and at this point Ohio should be in the toss-up/lean Obama category along with a slew of other battleground states, but the difference in ideology is worth keeping in mind.

[TJ in Oregon]

I think the national breakdown is usually closer to 40-40-20 conservative-moderate-liberal and I don't expect Ohio to be wildly different from this, certainly not enough that moderate and liberal are within four points.

[TJ in Oregon]

The electorate is likely going to be less Dem-friendly than it was in 2008 though.

I don't get Obama doing so relatively well in Ohio. It doesn't make sense to me.

John Kasich. Otherwise Obama would be in the dumpster here too and he may very well wind up there eventually depending on how the economy is and what ends up happing with Ohio Senate Bill 5, the public employee union reform. By that I don't just mean how badly it fails, but what the public outcry is like.

[TJ in Oregon]

Yes. It hasn't received the national attention that Scott Walker's in Wisconsin has because the Republicans had enough votes in the state senate for quorum so the Democrats couldn't flee the state, and because Ohio's state capital is not in a far-left town where it is considered acceptable to skip for a protest. But it's still going on, still very unpopular, and still on the ballot in a referendum this November.

[TJ in Oregon]

Odd. I don't understand why folks want to overpay public employees, but I guess that is their right. One would think they would rather pay market, and get more services (or less taxes), but I guess not.

Welcome to Ohio

Plus, the bill would put contractual disputes up to a local referendum, which I suspect would lead to making a lot of nasty disputes even nastier. It bans binding arbitration. I'm uncertain of how I'll vote, which ought to tell you that the Democrats are a lock to win it.

[TJ in Oregon]

Upon further consideration, I think I can explain why there are more liberals and conservatives in this poll than in others. PPP gives five options to describe one's ideology: Very Liberal, Somewhat Liberal, Moderate, Somewhat Conservative, and Very Conservative. This analysis has taken the "somewhat" and "very" categories and added them together, which is not the same as just asking "conservative", "liberal", or "moderate" because presumably some of the people who chose "somewhat liberal" or "somewhat conservative" would have chosen "moderate" if only given three options.