OH-University of Akron: Kasich+19

[Tender Branson]

46% Kasich
27% Fitzgerald
  4% Others

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/ohio/2014/09/08/akron--new-poll-shows-kasichs-lead-has-grown/15306809

[GA > OH, FL, NC]

[bore]

D+1

[Gass3268]

D+1

[Tender Branson]

Hopefully this poll doesn't cause Adam to jump in front of a train.

[Fuzzybigfoot]

lol

[Maxwell]

#dominating

Seriously, Fitzgerald is going to get wiped out. I won't be shocked if the other statewide races end up Republican despite Fitzgerald's little saving face move. I would laugh so hard if even Mandel survives.

[Vega]

Woah.

[c r a b c a k e]

Kasich is under 50 he's still vulnerable!!!

[Mynheer Peeperkorn]

[ElectionsGuy]

[Miles]

So am I the still only one who's going on record saying Corbett will lose by a smaller margin?

[ModerateVAVoter]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Where's Adam?

[IceSpear]

So a bunch of Fitz supporters went to undecided, but few/none went to Kasich. I wonder how well the third parties here will do.

[TJ in Oregon]

So a bunch of Fitz supporters went to undecided, but few/none went to Kasich. I wonder how well the third parties here will do.

..or it's just a bad poll that didn't push the leaners at all

The margin seems about right though. I think Fitz will still win Cuyahoga County, albeit barely.

So am I the still only one who's going on record saying Corbett will lose by a smaller margin?

I agree with you Miles. I think Corbett will eventually get a few more disgruntled Republicans to come home and keep it in the 10-12 point range. FitzGerald's ship has already sailed. I think an actual scandal is harder to recover from than general disgruntledness ala Corbett. Obviously I don't think either has a chance to actually come back and win.

[MR. KAYNE WEST]

Officially went into Lee Fisher territory. Bye Fitzgerald.

[Congrats, Griffin!]

I just got a fundraising e-mail about his poll from FitzGerald titled "Kasich under 50% in latest poll"

[IceSpear]

I just got a fundraising e-mail about his poll from FitzGerald titled "Kasich under 50% in latest poll"

#kasichunder50
#demwave

[ModerateVAVoter]

I just got a fundraising e-mail about his poll from FitzGerald titled "Kasich under 50% in latest poll"

Dying.

[LeBron]

Here's the actual link to the poll.

Let me just reiterate that I don't think Fitzy can win anymore. None of us did after the damage was done on Fitzy's image which was expressed in the polls. Some of Fitzy's endorsements are being withdrawn all while Kasich's gaining endorsements such as from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, he's funneling his cash to other campaigns like Lee Fisher's awful 2010 Senate campaign did, and Kasich/RGA are still airing ad after ad after ad in the state. The down-ballot Democrats have even outraised Fitzy and now Fitzy trails Kasich in fundraising 11 to 1. He's done, and nobody can argue otherwise.

If you look at the crosstabs, while FitzGerald still will lose, he won't be losing by a Corbett margin. There are a heck of a lot more undecided Democrats not behind FitzGerald yet while most Republicans are already backing Kasich. Republicans back Kasich 84-4 with 12% undecided and Democrats back FitzGerald 57-18 with 26% undecided. There's only one third party candidate and she won't get more than about 3-4%, so Fitzy still has a little room to improve his losing margin against Kasich.

Depending on what the voter turnout looks like and how strong we can GOTV for down-ballot candidates, will also depend on that. If turnout's anything like 2002 or 2010, then expect Fitzy to lose by mid-teens, but if turnout's better and is closer to 2006, he may only lose by high single digits then. GOTV is still important even if FitzGerald's doomed and the interest in the races has actually shown signs of increasing.

Also, for what it's worth, Fitzy does have leads among voters who want a Governor that "understands ordinary people", but is doing horribly among women, low-income and younger voters even though he's made his campaign off of those 3. Kasich also has a good showing among Tea Party voters despite Medicaid expansion. Zawistowski apparently wants Tea Partiers to just not vote at all in the Governor race without Charlie Earl, but that effort seems to be futile.

The state party strategy right now is wise to avoid mention of FitzGerald around people and continue to campaign for candidates who can win (Pillich, Turner, O'Donnell, and maybe Carney). Ed still wants to campaign, and I don't personally blame him since he gave up a lot (his position as CC Exec.) to run for Governor, but I think he realizes behind the positive pro-Ed messages brought on by Lauren Hitt that he's done. The best he can do now is hope he doesn't lose in a blowout so that he can run for something like State Rep. or State Sen. in 2018.

[LeBron]

UA also released their results on the down-ballot races. Most of them seem on par with past polls for these races, with the exception of Treasurer which is way off from the likely result in the end.

In the Attorney General race, DeWine has a 41-22 lead over Pepper. The reason for the big undecided's in AG can be attributed to the fact that the Democrat in that race, David Pepper, has name ID from his 2010 run for Auditor. A GOP internal had Pepper trailing by 29 and the Ohio Dems are refusing to even publicly release their own internal for Pepper, so that goes to show he just might do worse than FitzGerald in the margin. DeWine is also more popular than Kasich statewide and has broad support across the aisle, so that's mainly why Pepper has been performing so terribly. The actual campaign itself isn't bad since he's a good fundraiser and he did find some dirt on DeWine recently, just Pepper picked the wrong incumbent to run against. Safe R.

Mandel leads Pillich in Treasurer 34-25. Given other polls have shown Pillich up by 3, I doubt Mandel's up by that much if at all. He can still win, but the large undecided's here are contradictory to other OH-Treasurer polls that had only 10-15% undecided. Pillich, with Fitzy out of the picture, has more resources and attention going towards her. She's not getting hurt by the top of the ticket, but past history, with the exception of Mary Taylor in 2006, shows that the Ohio candidate at the top of losing gubernatorial ticket will almost always bring the whole ticket down. She'll have to fight that, but the environment is with her with an unpopular GOP incumbent and a strong, enthusiastic base on her side. She's pretty popular in some rural areas, to, and currently represents a suburban district outside Cincinnati, so I wouldn't forget that. I still consider this a tossup/tilt D.

Husted leads 30-25 in the Secretary of State race. The GOP has wisely attacked Turner the best way they can - polarization. Husted's voting restrictions on early voting and Golden Week were overturned, so it will now open more voting access to urban and minority voters and Turner has several "Meet Me at the Box" rallies in the big cities planned for the next 2 months, so turnout will be crucial in this race. If she can get the votes she needs out of urban counties like Mahoning, Cuyahoga, Lorain, Athens, Franklin etc., then I think she could just narrowly beat Husted. Otherwise, the Husted machine will prevail since he has the war chest to define Turner to voters. It's also worth noting that in almost every single poll so far, Turner has kept Husted within the margin of error, which really goes to show that 1) this race is unaffected by Fitzy and 2) Husted himself is an unsupportable, polarizing political figure. Tossup/Tilt R.

Yost they have as the most endangered incumbent; leading Carney 26-22. 52% are undecided though, and this is where Yost is favored; a race nobody cares about and even those who do pay attention to this one can note that while Carney has been running a good campaign, Yost is an uncontroversial incumbent whose successfully distanced himself from the Kasich Administration. Lean R.