Republican Gov. John Kasich has a 15 point lead over his Democratic challenger, Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, a new poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University shows.
Voters said they favored the governor 50 percent to 35 percent over FitzGerald in the poll. That compares to a five-point gap in Quinnipiac’s last Ohio poll, which was conducted in February. In that poll, Kasich held a 43-39 percent lead.
Kasich also scored support from more than 50 percent on other key questions.
Voters approved of his job performance 56 percent to 33 percent, the highest score he has received in a Quinnipiac poll since his election in 2010. And 53 percent said he deserves to be re-elected. Thirty-seven percent said no on that question.
The poll, conducted between May 7 and Monday, surveyed 1,174 registered voters by telephone. Interviewers called both land lines and cell phones. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
In the February poll, 70 percent of the Quinnipiac respondents said they did not know enough about FitzGerald to decide if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion. His campaign then viewed that, coupled with just a five-point overall gap, as a positive.
The former Lakewood mayor in his first term as county executive has never before run for statewide office.
The poll released Wednesday shows that is still an issue for FitzGerald.
Although his campaign has aired 60-second radio spots around the state that rap the governor’s performance and laud FitzGerald for offering a better way, 63 percent of the respondents in the new poll still say they don’t know him well enough to form an opinion.
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