OH: Public Policy Polling: Obama ahead by a lot among 2011 likely voters

[TJ in Oregon]

I'm not buying this poll. Don't get me wrong; the GOP is not doing very well in Ohio, but PPP released a poll last month where President Obama and Mitt Romney were tied at 46-46 last month and this poll was conducted the day before election day, when the state of Ohio was set to vote down SB5.

I suspect there's sort of an SB5 'bounce' for President Obama that will slowly dissappear as people forget about it. There still will be some level of residual Democratic bounce from it, just not quite this much.

[TJ in Oregon]

That's sort of the point of this poll. It was of likely 2011 voters, not likely 2012 voters. Assuming Democrats were more fired up about SB5 than Republicans (and the results certainly suggest that), one would expect Obama's numbers to be inflated.

That's probably part of it too. There was absolutely nothing to get excited about supporting for Ohio Republicans on the ballot this year: a union bill no one wants, a judicial reform no one understands, and a healthcare statment that doesn't do anything. Heck, I was wondering why I bothered to get an absentee ballot sent to me. Only one local race was even contested.

It's interesting that PPP decided to do a poll on the day before the 2011 election. I can't believe no one there thought it may be skewed. Wait until next month. I'm not saying the Republicans will be doing well, but it will at least be accurate.

[TJ in Oregon]

I think some of you non-Ohioans might not understand what SB5 was and did. If passed it would have outlawed public employee strikes and binding arbitration, contract disputes would have been settled by a vote (I forget if it was a referendum or township trustees in the final version; it changed somewhere along the way), forbid collective bargaining for anything beside wages (benefits would not have been negotiable), and included not just teachers but all unionized state employees including police and fire.

President Obama won 57% of the union vote. There are a decent sized minority of partisan Republicans in some of these unions, particularly the police and fire. Needless to say, it irritated a whole lot of people who would otherwise support Republicans. This PPP poll was conducted the day before the SB5 referrendum election. It's not a matter of unions suddenly becoming powerful or organizing. They always have organized and handed out literature to members. My mom gets a pamphlet every year from the union telling her who to vote for. It's a matter of a lot of people who are ticked off at the GOP. Some of them might stay that way all year and vote for Obama, but I have a hard time believing that it isn't mostly an emotional effect of SB5 that die down over time as the campaign heats up. I mean, just look at PPP's numbers from last month.