Voters don’t want President Obama to have another term

August 25, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS

Voters in Ohio and two other swing states agree on one thing about the coming presidential election: They don’t want President Barack Obama to have another term in office.

Asked by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute whether the president should get four more years, 72 percent of Ohioans, 74 percent of Pennsylvanians and 71 percent of Floridians replied in the negative.

And, though voters in the three states questioned earlier this month are supportive of Obama’s pollution limits on coal-fired energy plants, they’re not happy with his administration’s proposed nuclear pact with Iran.

“Despite President Barack Obama’s poor job-approval rating in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, voters back his Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to limit emissions from coal-fired power plants,” Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a statement. “It is noteworthy that Pennsylvania and Ohio are industrial states which would disproportionately be affected by the new regulations. But voters in these key presidential swing states are strongly opposed to the president’s key foreign policy initiative – the nuclear deal with Iran.”

He added, “And voters disagree 3-1 with President Obama’s recent comment that he thought he could win a third term if it were constitutionally permissible. Efforts to ban federal funding for Planned Parenthood are getting headlines, but do not have majority support.”

Connecticut-based Quinnipiac regularly gauges the views of Ohioans and other swing states on issues and candidates.

It surveyed 1,096 voters in Ohio, 1,093 in Florida and 1,085 in Pennsylvania for an issues poll released Monday. The results have a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

In Ohio, 67 percent of those questioned supported requiring coal-burning power plants to reduce pollution. They were more evenly divided on whether such efforts would prove to costly.

More than half (58 percent) of Ohio voters oppose the Iran nuclear pact, with 56 percent saying it would make the world less safe.

Fifty-two percent oppose cutting off federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

That same percentage also said immigrants should be allowed to stay, with a path toward citizenship.

Fifty-one percent of Ohioans support sending U.S. ground troops into Syria and Iraq to battle ISIS.