Poll: Ohioans want some change from next president, favor negotiations with Iran

One thing you can believe in: The 2016 presidential election will be about change, assuming that a trend emerging in a new poll of Ohio and two other swing states continues and voters say they want a new direction after President Barack Obama’s eight years.

Nearly two out of three Ohio voters, or 64 percent,  said they would like to see the country’s next president change policies rather than continue with Obama’s, according to results of a new Quinnipiac University poll released this morning. The desire for change was up slightly, from 61 percent, from early February, when Quinnipiac last conducted its swing state poll.

This was the second part of a two-day Quinnipiac release of polling in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, and today’s stands somewhat in contrast to yesterday’s: Ohio voters say they want change at the White House, but in the poll portion released yesterday, they nevertheless preferred the leading presumptive Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, to any of the potential Republican challengers who have emerged so far.

Clinton was secretary of state under Obama.

Today’s release also shows that 68 percent of Ohio voters support lifting some economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran restricting its nuclear program in a way that makes it harder to produce nuclear weapons. Multinational talks involving the Obama administration are continuing in an effort to get such an agreement.

Yet Ohioans do not trust Iran, with 62 percent saying Iran is not capable of acting in good faith. They nevertheless say a negotiated agreement is preferable to military intervention. An overwhelming share of those polled, 73 percent, said so.

Similarly, 57 percent of Ohio voters said that 47 U.S. senators, all Republicans, acted inappropriately when they sent an open letter to Iranian leaders stating that any agreement with Obama would only be an “executive agreement” that could be revoked unless it got congressional approval. Ohio’s Rob Portman was among those who signed.

But a plurality of Ohio voters, or 47 percent, said the letter would neither help nor hurt negotiations but, rather, would make no difference.

Ohio is a swing state, where ballot preferences can shift from election to election because of factors including the state of the economy and the quality of candidates. But Ohio voters’ partisan divisions could not be clearer in this poll, nor could the potential role of independent voters in 2016.

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