Zogby - Ohio: Poised For A Left Turn? (Brown Leads DeWine 46% to 37%)

[Mark E. Smith]

April 03, 2006

Governor Taft's numbers continue to languish; DeWine in serious trouble. Voters say Dems better share their values.

With Ohio Gov. Bob Taft's job approval numbers continuing as the worst in the nation, and with just over one in four (28%) giving incumbent Republican Sen. Mike DeWine good marks for his work in Washington, one of the nation's premiere swing states appears ready for a Democratic take-over, a new Wall Street Journal/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Just 6% give Taft good marks for the job he is doing leading the state, the survey shows. In the Senate race, a head-to-head match-up against Democrat Sherrod Brown, the congressman from northeast Ohio who is giving up his seat to challenge DeWine this year, Brown leads DeWine by a 46% to 37% margin.

Brown's margin over DeWine closely mirrors the sentiments of voters statewide, who said that, by a 43% to 35% margin, the Democratic Party leaders more reflect their values than Republican Party leaders.

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1088

[SharonRB]

1. Woo hoo hoo

If we lose, we'll know Diebold had something to do with it.

[niceypoo]

66. the GOP will magically win when the last precinct comes in

Of course the last precinct or two will be heavily GOP and will be hours late.....and the win will be by a hairs breadth......

[darkmaestro019]

69. Yep. Can you say "Blackwell" I knew you could....

If someone could lock that bitch in a footlocker for the whole span of the election so he can't get to that little votehacker thing that's supposedly on his desk we might have a real chance.

[greekspeak]

2. Those numbers CAN go up as the dems contain that conflagration known as...

the republican party. Yeah your going to go down in flames, just like Jesse Helms (?) But the Dems HAVE to make political hay while the sun shines while the Puke jaugernaut is stranded in the ditch.

[Eurobabe]

3. Well, I'll at least be here for the primaries on May 2nd.

I've seen a ton of Strickland ads here in SW OH. It's good, my county (Warren, scene of the 2004 lockdown and fake Homeland Security ploy) consumes the largest amount of toxic KOOLAID in the USA.

Should I vote Repube against Blackwell in the primary? I think Strickland is safe for the Dems.

[blue cat]

7. I don't think so

because if Ohio is rigged, Blackwell will win anyway. They somehow will cover it up, or try to, and the DU will expose him, then finally the country will believe.... It could happen.

[The Magistrate]

76. He Will Lose, Ma'am, And Badly

A party that derives the greatest part of its voting strength from exploiting racist attitudes makes a profound mis-judgement in running a Black man for statewide office. Whatever pious noises they may make when witnesses are present, a solid quarter at least of regular Republican voters in Ohio will not be able to bring themselves to cast ballots for him....

[gristy]

4. Gov Taft has a 6% approval rating?

Well, glory be.

[MissWaverly]

21. If he had a (D) following his name, he would have been booted

by now, but we all know the Greedy Old Pirates Party, they get a million and one chances
to destroy our country, I just saw on the news tonight that the Federal Government with Karl Rove's help have killed the salmon fishing season. It seem's that Karl Rove made a personal trip to open the valve to release water from their spawning river for irrigation. The result 80,000 salmon died in warm, shallow water. Now there will not be a salmon season, an estimated million and a half down the drain for the fishing industry, the farmers
(feel) real bad, they really do, but they still want the water diverted and the
federal government says it's not their stupidity, there's no salmon but they probably
didn't have anything to do with it, it was probably Clinton that opened that valve, he
just was dressed up to look like Karl Rove in disguise.

[donkeyotay]

58. Isn't that stunning? His mother wouldn't vote for him. I thought

Dick Deadeye Cheney was scraping the bottom of the barrel at 18%. Single digits? Oh my.

[Tiggeroshii]

5. Any Ohio Democrat is probably not going to make it

...not until the Repugs and their machines are cleaned up. It doesn't matter how well the Dem's doing in the polls right now, he's bound to lose if Blackwell's in charge of the counting.

[Danieljay]

20. I believe you are right. Diebold and Blackwell will decide, Not the voter

[Tiggeroshii]

29. And either Blackwell will be preoccupied with lawsuits come election day

...so that he won't have the time to steal it witht he kind of micromanagement he'll probably be capable of, or he's just gonna rip it out of our hands again without anyone of influence suspecting.

[0rganism]

59. Nor can the cleanup come democratically

IIRC, the pre-election polling for Ohio's recent voting reform ballot measures was 2-to-1 in favor, and the election returns were 2-to-1 against. Any re-institutionalization of democracy will have to be done from the top down, probably via federal mandate under the 14th amendment. Of course, the republican election fraud machinery in Ohio will do its best to prevent this from happening.

[Oceansaway]

6. DeWine is an asshole...serves him right !

[OhioBlue]

8. Republicans will be pouring TONS of money

into these races. Right now, Petro and Blackwell are fighting each other but after the primary, Strickland will be targeted.

http://www.tedstrickland.com/

Big Business will also throw lots of money at DeWine to retain his Senate seat over Sherrod Brown

http://www.sherrodbrown.com/

We need to build the grassroots early and help with fundraising to keep these leads.

I've volunteered for SOS candidate Jennifer Brunner : www.jenniferbrunner.com - she is committed to making the elections open, honest and fair. She is very intelligent, qualified and has a great deal of integrity!

The poll numbers are GREAT news - but we have to start working now to make sure that these leads hold and the noise machine doesn't win!

[0007]

24. Do you think he can hold the lead?

[FloridaPat]

9. How did Ohio make a right turn after loosing all those steel mills

and other industries? I always thought it was a northern state.

[OnionPatch]

16. That's what I wondered

because I grew up in eastern Ohio and Democrats were in the majority for sure. If you look at the county election map from 2004, my old home county, Jefferson, which is in the heart of the steel area on the eastern border, went blue. So there are still lots of union or ex-union people there. The problem, I think, is when you head west. Miles and miles of rural areas, unions few and far between, conservative churches everywhere and Rush Limbaugh coming in loud and clear on the radio....

Oh, and don't forget the machines and Blackwell. It's entirely possible that Ohio never did turn red at all.

[Danieljay]

19. Diebold and Republican political corruption. Thats how. n/t

[ClintonTyree]

45. A right turn into the voting booth with Diebold.....

that's the only turn they needed. State by State, as governments turn away from these crooked and hackable machines, I'll enjoy watching Diebold go tits up along with the Republican slime they've stolen elections for. It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

[maseman]

22. Cities versus rural

Ohio is a mixed bag like many mid-west states. Cleveland (Cuyahoga County), Akron (Summit County), Youngstown (Mahoning County), Columbus (Franklin County), Dayton (Montgomery County) and Toledo (Lucas County) are all pretty much Blue. You have some other counties that sometimes go blue like Canton (Stark County), Kent (Portage COunty), etc. but the other 78 counties or so seem to usually go Red. But it is always close since the majority of the population is in the bigger city counties.

[leftchick]

38. Diebold

and they are not ever going to be make a left turn until those machines are gone.

:(

[dchill]

80. That's the whole truth...

and nothing but the truth.

"That's the problem with paperless ballots and no trail balloting. They're gone," Wheeler said.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2210667

[HughBeaumont]

43. Southwest and it's surroundings.

Unfortunately, those on the eastern border and the Northeast (concentrations of the bigger cities, but in few counties) and the islands of Franklin (Columbus) and Athens counties could only do so much. Duh High Ah, area wise, is mostly rural, and those rural counties went heavily for the Chimp. Even Cincinnati and its county went about 50-50 for the Simian. Diebold no doubt corrupted things, but the fact remains that the Ohio rural white voter still kowtows to the Cabal.

The counties where the steel mills/manufacturing/other industries were lost to the corpocracy went heavily blue (Lorain and Cuyahoga counties), BTW.

[darkmaestro019]

70. Vote fraud.

I'm right here in the smack middle of the starving lands. I've had about a dozen jobs since I got here. You get in, and they get their order filled and lay you off--and then the plants we DIDN'T dread the agency calling us to send us to went to China. And everyone KNOWS it's the Repugs, even if they aren't quite politically apt enough to express it clearly. If you could line up everyone in OH and count Rep or Dem I think this state would be as blue as the best kind of popsicle. : )

[Voltaire99]

73. The answer goes much, much deeper than Diebold.

"What Was the Matter with Ohio?: Unions and Evangelicals in the Rust Belt," by James Straub. The Monthly Review, January 2006.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0106straub.htm

[electropop]

10. 6%? 6%? Jeez, when Taft gets re-elected, will that tell people

something is wrong?

[OhioBlue]

12. He is term limited out n/t

[electropop]

13. Are you sure?

We think Bushitler is term-limited too, but I think he'll only leave in handcuffs.

[OhioBlue]

14. I'm sure.

He's not on the ballot plus nobody likes him - the Republicans can't even wait to get rid of him.

[MGKrebs]

52. Heh. I think that too, sometimes.

It's scary.

[The_Counsel]

77. Y'know What's Funny and Maddening at the Same Time...?

...Taft's numbers weren't that hot in '02 either, IIRC. They weren't absolutely PUTRID, as they are now, but they were certainly a source of concern for anyone running for re-election.

Through the magic of C-SPAN, I had the chance to watch two debates between Taft and Tim Hagen, his Democratic opponent in '02. There was one question that just kept popping up in my head as I watched those debates: "why the hell is this thing even CLOSE???" Hell, in the second debate, Hagen asked Taft point blank: "would you even be RUNNING for governor if your last name wasn't 'Taft'?"

Yet, somehow, Taft won re-election by a comfortable margin; some 20 points, I believe. That's when I knew Ohio was screwed...

[ourbluenation]

11. This is a very good sign. Very good indeed.

K and R

:kick:

[bedpanartist]

15. Does the Democratic Party Have the Balls to Use

my photoblog of Dayton, Ohio in its advertising?

It should.

http://realdaytonohio.blogspot.com

[Benhurst]

25. Thanks for the pictures. They were quite good. NT

[MGKrebs]

55. Not sure about the DNC, but really good photos and captions.

Billie Holiday is playing in the background and it seems to fit.

[populistdriven]

17. Democrats need to win in Tennessee and knock off five GOP incumbents.

Only five look truly vulnerable: Conrad Burns of Montana, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and Jim Talent of Missouri. . .

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/03/macro_micro.html

Right now we are behind in Tennessee...

New Poll Has Bryant With Largest Lead Over Ford
A new Wall Street Journal/Zogby poll has Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ed Bryant as the leading candidate.

It shows Bryant leading Ford Jr. by a 7.5 point margin. The poll has Bryant at 49.4% and Ford at 42.4%.

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_82942.asp


Ford's negatives are the highest in the field and without Tennessee we have no senate majority :(

[Lexingtonian]

23. uhm....

There was a lot of hype about the Tennessee race and Harold Ford, but that race was never the best shot at the sixth or seventh seat. 2006 looks to be a turnaround election in large parts of the country, but perhaps not the South. To me it's looking as if the South will stay in political holding pattern, unenthusiastic but Republican, until the next elections.

I think Democrats have better chances in the Nevada, Virginia, and Arizona Senate races than the one in Tennessee.

[Danieljay]

18. Will it happen? Doubt it. Two words:

Voting machines.

[EFerrari]

26. Bookmark the thread so when Brown loses, people will

remember the real numbers.

[SoCalDem]

27. Ohio leaned left in Nov 04.. Do we really know the goings on

in vote counting?? ...just sayin'

[shanti]

28. what? nothing a little diebold can't take care of.

:sarcasm:

[geiger]

30. I'm curious how "values" were defined,

if at all.

[superconnected]

31. As if it maters with Diebold at large.

And state elections officials willing to throw the election.

[stepnw1f]

32. Excellent

This is good news. Although, remember poll number need to be scrutinized, so let's keep the pressure on nice and high for good measure.

[Mrspeeker]

33. the polls show the truth

then the election happens in Ohio and well we all no what happened in 2004, Diebold, Redistricting and Blackwell!
We can set up elections in Iraq that are more honest then here!

[bj2110]

34. I wish people would stop using Diebold as a signal of hopelessness -

ES&S, Seqouia, and other voting machine manufacturers have just as much opportunity, and because of everyone's fascination with Diebold, these others have less exposure. And while I agree with the general sentiment relative to the fight being with the vote counters, and not the vote casters, this bland, uninformed Diebold rhetoric belittles the real problem: corporate influence in the voting process, conflicts of interests for public officials, and the utter lack of accountability that our government has placed with the private entities that control our vote.

[klook]

39. That would make a good lead topic for a new thread.

If we wait for Diebold (and the other touchscreen voting machine manufacturers) to dry up and blow away before we do anything, we'll be a waiting a while.

[OnyxCollie]

50. Don't discount the effect of electronic voting.

Today, I heard that ES&S memory cards failed again in Summit country. A month ago, 30% of the machines failed. Just yesterday, that POS Ken Blackwell revealed that he had 178 shares of Diebold stock in his portfolio. Whoops.

Welcome to Ohio, where one Democrat equals no vote.

[Botany]

35. and DeWine will win by 51 to 48%

We need a clean vote.

[LynneSin]

36. Don't bet the farm on this race - Diebold will ensure a DeWine win

:cry:

[ElboRuum]

37. If Dems share their values...

Someone needs to explain to me why they voted for the Boy Prince in 2004... Or are we all just chalking all of this up to Diebold Dirty Deeds?

[McCamy Taylor]

40. Ohio IS Election Fraud Central-But Rove Has His Work Cut Out for Him

One option is to write off Ohio and concentrate the fraud on other states where no one is looking---like California. My ESP tells me that something big may be in the works there. Also, watch out for Lousianna. I think we are going to see some unprecidented fraud go down in the wake of Katrina. La. could go entirely red. That would make up for some losses in Ohio.

There is also an almost 100% likelihood of a smear campaign against the Dem Senate candidate later in the season, fueled by sympathetic Ohio news media outlets. All they have to do is narrow to lead to low double digits and then use E-vote fraud.

[jseankil]

41. Will gay marriage be on the ballet?

Seems like they will pull that out of their hat to get the fundies in southern ohio to come out and vote.

[OnyxCollie]

49. Gay marriage is already illegal in Ohio.

But Mikey the Fascist Enabler wants to make a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. What a dickhead.

[customerserviceguy]

42. Has anyone

underestimated the effect of the Amish vote in the 2004 election? Gay marriage got a lot of them out to vote, and they're notoriously undercounted in telephone polls for some strange reason...

[PegDAC]

63. I love sarcasm!

Being descended from Amish (within four generations) I do appreciate this
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[yellowcanine]

44. Ohio is trending Democratic. Repub corruption may speed up the shift.

But Ohio Dems can't sit on their hands. They need to get out there and kick pubbie butt.

[liberal N proud]

46. This day started out good with the Delay story - NOW: yeah!

As I head out to a candidates forum, this is excellent news.
Sharrod will not be there but I believe we did get his wife to speak.

[DuaneBidoux]

47. Don't forget Zogby called the election for Kerry

[Mark E. Smith]

48. Yep. They were right then, too.

[DuaneBidoux]

62. I don't buy it. I've not seen the evidence to say this election was

stolen. 2000 is another matter. But if you look closely at Shrubs 04 numbers among a number of groups including Catholics and Hispanics he pulled a good 5% more of both groups than 00.

It was a very close election--and I think that was the difference between winning and loss.

I hope Dems don't get so wrapped up in the past that they don't pull together a cogent strategy to SELL themselves with a great platform. Don't count on discust with Republicans to do the job.

[PegDAC]

64. Have you read "What happened in Ohio?"

[DuaneBidoux]

75. Is it a book?

I do know that the lines in minority districts were extremely long well after the polls were closed but I was led to believe that those people did eventually get to vote. I do have to admit it would have been great to get Ohio and watch Kerry win the electoral and not popular vote.

[SallyMander]

51. more Ohio politics...

Hello DUers!

It's my first time posting here, although i'm a regular reader. Just thought you all might be interested in the Columbus, OH local news (10TV) story i just saw. They report that Ken Blackwell "didn't know he owned" 178 shares of Diebold stock worth over $9500.

He blamed it on his broker. Go figure.

[OnyxCollie]

53. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

56. Hi, SallyMander

Welcome to DU.

:hi:

Nice first post. :)

[PegDAC]

65. This is

a whole new light on the subject! Thanks, and welcome!

[darkmaestro019]

71. Welcome, fellow inmate of OH ; )

We need all the progressives we can get, glad to see you :applause:

[SallyMander]

74. Thanks for the warm welcome!

I moved to Columbus from Boston, so it's been a bit of a culture shock!

[VP505]

54. Brown better win

after what was done to Hackett to position him against DeWine.

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

57. Those numbers don't matter.

They merely reflect the will of the people, which has absolutely no bearing on who wins elections in Ohio.

[autorank]

67. Correct...for $800...advance to the Championship Round;)

Of course they mean nothing. Look at the special election this summer...issues of election reform leading 60-30% are defeated 60-30%...what utter insanity. The pre election poll is regarded as the best predictive poll in the nation. Guess this was their first big screw up. "Coincidence" huh...right.

[iconoclastNYC]

60. Take a look at the RON initiatives and you'll know.

That OHIO is due for another "WTF?" Election night.

The RON (Reform Ohio Now) initiatives prove that the MSM will turn a blind eye to election results no matter how bizarre.

For those that don't know the RON initiatives failed by the margins pre-election polling showed them winning by.

Expect DeWine and Blackwell to win by miraculous come-from-behind 1 or 2 point margins.

There must be an unprecedented on-the-ground surveillance and parallel election campaign to catch the fuckers in the act.

If not...forget it.

[fujiyama]

61. Too early to pop the corks just yet

The polls for the state seem all over the place. I'd say it's a dead heat and a competetive race, but after '04, I'm not going to get wildly excited just yet.

And we have yet to be fully assured the election in the state will be fair.

[darkmaestro019]

68. GOOD. I despise DeWine.

I don't even need to LOOK IT UP to know how he'll vote on any given issue. If it's the evil regressive thing to do, he's in favor. If it's progressive, fair, or a good idea, he's against it.

[rodeodance]

72. whow. hope this can keep steady till NOV.

[dchill]

78. 9 points? 9 points?

Easily taken care of by programming extra fundageligal phantom votes into the proprietary software at the plethora of EVMs all over Ohio - and Amurika.

I'm not joking. This is in the cards. It has already happened. Our democracy is not being protected by our Democrats.

[lovuian]

79. Woohoo

:woohoo:

[tom_paine]

81. Unfortunately, Ohio has been Diebolded

"Well, it appears as if DeWine has won 54-46%, Katie."

"Yes, it is a tribute to effective campaigning that DeWine picked up 99.99% of the udnecided vote."

I hate to be so cynical, but one comes to expect that sort of thing in Totalitarian Nations like Imperial Amerika.

[dchill]

82. No one could have imagined...

that you are absolutely right. The only thing that would shock me would be the press actually investigating the lop-sided elections results that we are about to HAVA all across the country.