OH-Quinnipiac: Portman trailing Strickland, crushing Sittenfeld

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Yeah I'm gonna call bs on this one, even Sittenfield can't be down that much and even Strickland shouldn't be up that much.

Actually Sittenfield is probably down by more, Strickland probably leads by 4-5% right now.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

There's no way Strickland's leading by that much, and if he is it won't last. Ohioans don't remember the negative political drama and recession from 5 years ago - they remember Strickland as this folksy, nice, "common guy" type of candidate. Strickland's approval was in the toilet in 2010 and that's after a barrage of ads by Kasich that managed to convince voters Strickland was responsible for the +400,000 jobs lost, the credit downgrades, the budget deficit etc. Portman's going to do the same thing again only he'll have a lot more cash to spend than Kasich did. Just keep that in mind.

Plus FWIW, Portman's favorable ratings while they are lower than Strickland's, are going up faster than his unfavorable's.

I'm kind of curious though why they didn't poll the regions. Because with a sizable gap between Portman/P.G. and Portman/Strickland here, I could only imagine they oversampled Appalachia.

Overall, Strickland (or Sittenfeld if he magically became nominee) will lose to Portman. Dude has set himself up to be re-elected and will outperform whoever the Presidential nominee is. Strickland's faults  are in his inability to appeal to big city voters and he has a horrible retread of baggage while Sittenfeld can't make up for his name ID in time before Portman would define him.

It's just a question of whether we should run and lose with an old guy who has no future or a young, rising star who definitely has a bright future ahead of him and as his 90% of nobody knowing who he is shows, would help him out immensely with this statewide run.

You're just mad Sittenfield is gonna get his ass handed to him in the primary

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Something is really off here. An incumbent doesn't trail a challenger by nine points in a swing state barring a super-star challenger or a personal scandal/uniquely despised incumbent. This fits none of those categories.

Although, there's a lot more undecideds than usual, it seems. Maybe a good chunk of Republicans saying "undecided" because of Portman's stance on gay marriage? If so, they likely come home in the end and make this much closer.

Strickland is more or less a superstar challenger locally.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

There's no way Strickland's leading by that much, and if he is it won't last. Ohioans don't remember the negative political drama and recession from 5 years ago - they remember Strickland as this folksy, nice, "common guy" type of candidate. Strickland's approval was in the toilet in 2010 and that's after a barrage of ads by Kasich that managed to convince voters Strickland was responsible for the +400,000 jobs lost, the credit downgrades, the budget deficit etc. Portman's going to do the same thing again only he'll have a lot more cash to spend than Kasich did. Just keep that in mind.

Plus FWIW, Portman's favorable ratings while they are lower than Strickland's, are going up faster than his unfavorable's.

I'm kind of curious though why they didn't poll the regions. Because with a sizable gap between Portman/P.G. and Portman/Strickland here, I could only imagine they oversampled Appalachia.

Overall, Strickland (or Sittenfeld if he magically became nominee) will lose to Portman. Dude has set himself up to be re-elected and will outperform whoever the Presidential nominee is. Strickland's faults  are in his inability to appeal to big city voters and he has a horrible retread of baggage while Sittenfeld can't make up for his name ID in time before Portman would define him.

It's just a question of whether we should run and lose with an old guy who has no future or a young, rising star who definitely has a bright future ahead of him and as his 90% of nobody knowing who he is shows, would help him out immensely with this statewide run.

You're just mad Sittenfield is gonna get his ass handed to him in the primary

Dude, P.G.'s not going to get 10% in the primary like you think.

He'll get more around 30-35% of the vote against Strickland. P.G. has $750K CoH (250K came from in-state donations while the rest came from fundraisers with his sister who's a best selling author, major CEOs, and major Obama allies).

Point being, Sittenfeld isn't going to look like some joke perennial candidate in the primary. He's still raising a good amount of money even despite the fact that party bosses are trying to cut off P.G.'s donors. He'll put up an average showing in the primary, but Strickland is only going to carry this primary win away so easily if for no other reason the fact that Democrats know who he is. If most Ohio Democrats knew who P.G. was, and voters got the chance to see their records through way of several public debates, I have no doubt P.G. would have a realistic chance at walking away with the nomination.

Now I'm not the only Ohio Democrat who feels that Strickland can't win and that he should allow newer blood to run here. Strickland's probably one of the only candidates in our bench who will have to go on defense more than Portman will. He isn't going to outraise Portman like he did Kasich - far from it. Strickland's Southeast Ohio advantage will mostly be gone by the time Portman and the gun/coal groups are done attacking him as an anti-gun, anti-coal candidate (by citing CAP), and as is he already under-performs in the urban counties. I don't see him winning, in all honesty.

A few things:

1) Most of Sittenfield's total was raised before Strickland got in the race when most people believed Sittenfield would be the nominee.

2) I don't think he'll get 10%, more like 20%.

3) Sittenfield is a joke candidate who thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread and that is becoming increasingly clear.  Even Paul Hackett (who had a much stronger case than Sittenfield) could read the writing on the wall and stood aside (albeit reluctantly) when a far better and more electable candidate entered the race with nearly universal support from the state and national party.

4) Sittenfield has already made it clear that he intends to run a negative primary campaign and is starting to make some pretty gross attacks on Strickland (the way he is going after Strickland for the latter's age has been vaguely ageist at times).