COLUMBUS, Ohio – Governor John Kasich is on a “freeway to victory” Nov. 4, according to a pollster whose survey of Ohio voters shows the Republican incumbent leading his Democratic challenger by 22 points.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday morning, Kasich leads Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald 57 to 35 percent, a margin that could spell doom for the Democratic Party ticket.
“If Kasich wins by 20 points or more, it will be difficult for any of the under ticket Democrats to survive,” Brown added. The Ed FitzGerald campaign, for which Democrats once had high hopes, could turn out to be a disaster for the party as well as for FitzGerald,” said Peter Brown, the poll’s assistant director.
Name-recognition continues to be one of FitzGeralld’s biggest problems: 48 percent of the respondents said they did not know enough about his to have an opinion while Kasich enjoys a 54 percent favorability rating.
FitzGerald’s campaign has been slowed by controversy and a lack of funding. In a statement, FitzGerald says is confident he will close the gap as more people learn about him and focus on the race.
“Kasich, who hit some bumps in the road early in his first term, looks like he’s on a freeway to an easy reelection victory. Not only is Gov. Kasich getting a healthy share of Democrats, but he also has a double-digit lead among women, something almost unheard of in this era of the gender gap,” Brown said.
Kasich gets the nod from 25 percent of Democratic voters and 52 percent of women in the poll of likely voters, which cannot be compared to earlier polls of registered voters, Brown said.
With five weeks until Election Day, Brown says 78 percent of the voters say their minds are made up and 22 percent say they still might change their mind.
The poll, conducted from Sept. 24–29, has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.