COLUMBUS, Ohio – President Obama’s approval rating in Ohio is close to an all-time low, but that doesn’t appear to be harming his party’s likely 2016 presidential candidate in the key swing state.
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According to a poll released Thursday morning by Quinnipiac University, only 36 percent of Ohio voters approve of the way the president doing his job — with 59 percent disapproving — nearly as bad as the 34 percent rating he got in a Nov. 27 poll.
The same survey in May gave him a 39-percent approval rating.
“The bad news for Democrats is that President Barack Obama’s approval rating in Ohio is close to his all-time, all-state low. The good news for the party is that the president doesn’t appear to be hurting the Democrats’ consensus front-runner for 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll.
Clinton leads Gov. John Kasich and all of the likely Republican contenders.
Ohio women give Obama more credit, with 42 percent approving of his presidency, compared to only 30 percent of men. Only three in 10 independent voters approve of his job performance and even the Democratic approval rating in an anemic 74 percent, a long way from 2012 when he won Ohio on his way to reelection, Brown said.
Ohio voters back Clinton over their Kasich, 47-40 percent. She tops Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, 46-42 percent; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 48-37 percent, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, 46-37 percent, according to the poll.
Paul gets 44 percent of independent voters to Clinton’s 41 percent, but she leads other candidates among this group by margins of six to 14 percentage points, Brown said.
More than half of Ohio voters polled — 52 percent — have a favorable opinion of Clinton while Kasich has the highest rating among the Republicans, 46 percent.
Ohio voters approve of the job Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is doing by a margin of 49-32 percent and give Republican Rob Portman a 40-28 percent approval rating.
Pollsters surveyed 1,366 registered voters from July 24-28. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points.