U.S. Sen. Rob Portman faces a tough reelection with the challenge from former Gov. Ted Strickland, who would win if voters decided today, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
In the Senate race, Strickland would get 48 percent of the vote to Portman’s 39 percent, while another 10 percent said they don’t know and 3 percent said they wouldn’t vote.
Strickland, a Democrat, is being challenged by another Democrat, Cincinnati City Council member P.G. Sittenfeld, for the right to challenge Portman, a Republican. If Sittenfeld were on the ballot instead of Strickland, Portman would win 47-24.
But another 24 percent said they didn’t know which candidate would get their vote in a Portman-Sittenfeld contest. Sittenfeld is a blank slate, with a massive 89 percent of voters saying they don’t know enough about him.
Portman’s challenge in a race against Strickland is twofold, according to the poll results. He doesn’t have a problem with his fellow Republicans, 79 percent of whom said they would vote for him rather than Strickland.
But he does with self-identified independents, 50 percent of whom would vote for Strickland.
Only 32 percent of independents said they would vote for Portman, although another 15 percent said they don’t know which candidate they would support .
This is only one poll and the election is 17 months away. But if it mirrors private polling, it helps explain why Portman and the Republican Party are trying to remind Ohioans of the job losses that occurred when Strickland was governor and the American economy was suffering. Whether Strickland’s fault or not, Republicans want voters to associate Strickland with those times.
But Portman may have a deeper problem — the second challenge that this poll suggests. Ohio voters feel that they know Strickland, and 49 percent said they have a favorable opinion of him. Yet only 38 percent had a favorable opinion of Portman, a freshman senator in his fifth year.
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