There were lots of interesting things in the Bliss Institute's Ohio politics poll, but one set of numbers jumped off the page and conked us on the head, because they were so weird.Or we have a serious screwed up poll. Funny how these media flacks never seem to report that possibility...
In a section where Ohio voters were polled about their satisfaction over the results of the 2006 election, 68.8 percent of all voters polled said they were "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with the election of Democrat Ted Strickland over Republican Ken Blackwell in the governor's race.
That's not particularly unusual; voters tend to like to pat themselves on the back during the honeymoon period after the election of a new governor or president, but the Bliss Institute's break-out numbers on how Ohio Republicans feel about the election of Strickland were astounding.
Nearly half of the Republicans polled (48.7 percent) said they were "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with the election of a Democrat as Ohio's governor.
Ohio Republicans are not generally into wearing hair shirts or self-flagellation, so there are only two possible explanations for this, and neither of them have much to do with Gov. Strickland.
they either (1) had no use for their own gubernatorial candidate; or (2) were so fed up with their party leadership that they were willing to endure a Democrat in the Statehouse for the next four years.
Or both.
A few things that we need to know about the poll's demographics... First, is that independents who leaned Republican were counted as Republicans. I suspect that there were an awful LOT of "Republican leaning" "independents"... But we really need the breakdown of who participated in this poll. Unfortunately, we don't get the breakdown on the demographics... I find this poll to be lacking tremendously in the reality department...
There is no way 70% of Republicans could ever have "moderate confidence" that Ted Strickland has a chance at "turning Ohio around."
Sorry...just not buying it.
