There's no way Strickland's leading by that much, and if he is it won't last. Ohioans don't remember the negative political drama and recession from 5 years ago - they remember Strickland as this folksy, nice, "common guy" type of candidate. Strickland's approval was in the toilet in 2010 and that's after a barrage of ads by Kasich that managed to convince voters Strickland was responsible for the +400,000 jobs lost, the credit downgrades, the budget deficit etc. Portman's going to do the same thing again only he'll have a lot more cash to spend than Kasich did. Just keep that in mind.
Plus FWIW, Portman's favorable ratings while they are lower than Strickland's, are going up faster than his unfavorable's.
I'm kind of curious though why they didn't poll the regions. Because with a sizable gap between Portman/P.G. and Portman/Strickland here, I could only imagine they oversampled Appalachia.
Overall, Strickland (or Sittenfeld if he magically became nominee) will lose to Portman. Dude has set himself up to be re-elected and will outperform whoever the Presidential nominee is. Strickland's faults are in his inability to appeal to big city voters and he has a horrible retread of baggage while Sittenfeld can't make up for his name ID in time before Portman would define him.
It's just a question of whether we should run and lose with an old guy who has no future or a young, rising star who definitely has a bright future ahead of him and as his 90% of nobody knowing who he is shows, would help him out immensely with this statewide run.
You're just mad Sittenfield is gonna get his ass handed to him in the primary 
Dude, P.G.'s not going to get 10% in the primary like you think.
He'll get more around 30-35% of the vote against Strickland. P.G. has $750K CoH (250K came from in-state donations while the rest came from fundraisers with his sister who's a best selling author, major CEOs, and major Obama allies).
Point being, Sittenfeld isn't going to look like some joke perennial candidate in the primary. He's still raising a good amount of money
even despite the fact that party bosses are trying to cut off P.G.'s donors. He'll put up an average showing in the primary, but Strickland is only going to carry this primary win away so easily if for no other reason the fact that Democrats know who he is. If most Ohio Democrats knew who P.G. was, and voters got the chance to see their records through way of several public debates, I have no doubt P.G. would have a realistic chance at walking away with the nomination.
Now I'm not the only Ohio Democrat who feels that Strickland can't win and that he should allow newer blood to run here. Strickland's probably one of the only candidates in our bench who will have to go on defense more than Portman will. He isn't going to outraise Portman like he did Kasich - far from it. Strickland's Southeast Ohio advantage will mostly be gone by the time Portman and the gun/coal groups are done attacking him as an anti-gun, anti-coal candidate (by citing CAP), and as is he already under-performs in the urban counties. I don't see him winning, in all honesty.
