Sunday, the illustrious Columbus Dispatch released another of its fantasy polls. This one was in regard to both the Ohio Senate and gubernatorial races. According to this stellar poll, Strickland is beating Blackwell in the latter race by 20 points! Let's take a closer look:
First, we all know how I feel about the Dispatch polls after the Reform Ohio Now debacle last November. They were wrong on all four issues - 3 of them by 20 or more points (more on that in the next post).
Second, when you look at the internals of the poll, you find that of the 1,654 respondants, only 202 come from the GOP-heavy Southwestern part of the state while 615 (!) come from the Democrat-heavy Northwestern part of the state. While, I admit Cleveland has a larger population than Cincinnati, the suburbs in the NW have been in population decline for more than a decade while the suburbs that make up the corridor between Dayton and Cincinnati have had huge population explosions. (i.e. Warren County is the fastest growing county in Ohio and one of the top 15 fastest growing counties in the entire country!) So, the Cleveland area gets represented by a 3 to 1 margin over Cincinnati.....unfortunately, for the Dems and Mr. Strickland that kind of ratio will not hold up on election day.
Granted, I think Mr. Blackwell may be behind Mr. Strickland - but nowhere near by 20 points. And if history holds with the Dispatch poll, if Mr. Strickland is purported to be up by 20 points (like RON Issue 2 was) then he's gonna lose by 28 - like RON Issue 2 did last November in the only real poll that matters - the one at the ballot box.
BORU
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