Who do the Independents like? Regionalism, CrossOver Appeal, Brown, Dewine and more!
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
posted by Cindy from HeightsMom
The Suffolk Poll had the questions broken down into numerous formats. Some of these were how a respondant answered according to thier party affliations, income, location, age, sex, ect, ect - You get the picture.
Anyways - here is how the Independents answered the favorability questions (Is your opinion of candidate X generally favorable or generally unfavorable?):
Who do the Independents like? (crossover appeal in parenthesis)
- Mike DeWine - 53% Favorable with I's (34% with D's)
- Jim Petro - 38% Favorable with I's (21% with D's)
- Ken Blackwell - 33% Favorable with I's (17% with D's)
- Ted Strickland - 33% Favorable with I's (31% with R's)
- Sherrod Brown - 29% Favorable with I's (29% with R's )
- Paul Hackett - 12% Favorable with I's (17% with R's)
Not very surprising. The Republicans certainly have an edge with Independents. But as far as crossover - DeWine, Strickland and Brown all had more crossover appeal than I expected them to have, especially DeWine. Brown had a higher crossover number than Petro, Blackwell or Hackett. It seems important to point out that respondants did not have to choose one candidate over another. So, in primary races the respondant could have answered "favorable" to all candidates.
Who do the Independents dislike? (dislike within own party in parenthesis)
- Ken Blackwell - 31% Unfavorable with I's (21% with R's)
- Jim Petro - 26% Unfavorable with I's (20% with R's)
- Mike Dewine - 24% Unfavorable with I's (17% with R)
- Sherrod Brown - 14% Unfavorable with I's (16% with D's)
- Paul Hackett - 9% Unfavorable with I's (12% with D's)
- Ted Strickland - 7% Unfavorable with I's (7% with D's)
Ted Strickland looks really great here. Brown seems to fair a little better than DeWine. Funny how the Republicans were both the most "Highly Favorable" and the most "Highly Unfavorable" with I's. As far as inside party discontent, all of the Republicans had more "unfavorable" marks from within thier own party than the Democratic candidates.
This Favorability question in the Suffolk Poll could have been answered 4 ways - Favorable, Unfavorable, Undecided and Do Not Know" the candidate. Between 15 and 20% of respondants answered "Undecided" for all of the candidates. Who they answered "Do Not Know" the candidate for - surprised me a little, at least, the region where it was coming from.
Who Didn't Anybody Know?
55% Didn't even know who Paul Hackett was. (It broke down 47%D, 57% both R &I)
I expected Mr. Hackett to be less known than other candidates since he hasn't really run or held statewide office before but - this number was much more than I expected. Of the 55% who did not know who Paul Hackett was - by far the highest concentration was the Cincinnati/Dayton region! How could respondants in the Cincinnati/Dayton region not know who Paul Hackett was? Isn't that where he ran? This seems weird to me. I had really expected Paul Hackett to be doing better here. In contrast, only 9% did not know who DeWine was. This poll was taken in March, right after Hackett dropped out of the race. ( Hackett was getting a lot of press and had been in the blogosphere nonstop since the special election.) I just assumed, he would be better known than that. I guess, I am a little isolated in my own blog world.
Some other things that I didn't expect from the Hackett question were that NE Ohio gave him the highest favorablity marks. Toledo and the NW portion of the state knew him the most but were also the most undecided about him. Also, respondants whom stated they were voting for Sherrod Brown gave Paul Hackett the most favorability marks.
57% of the Suffolk Poll was comprised of people who proclaimed themselves as Unenrolled in a party, Independant or Undeclared. The rest of the respondants were pretty equally D's and R's.
Another shocking revelation:
Jim Petro was the candidate most popular with the ladies :-) Yikes!
Sometimes, I get a little caught up in internet and blog politics and I forget the rest of the world is set at a different pace. This poll offered me a little insight on the true make up of our state. It also makes me ponder whether political bloggers are trendsetters, running a little ahead of the pack or just isolated in an internet clique. My conclusion so far - a little bit of both.
