Poll: 55% in Ohio approve of Kasich

By Marc Kovac | February 11, 2015 at 12:02a.m.

COLUMBUS

Ohio voters are happy with Gov. John Kasich and satisfied with the way things are going in the state, according to a new survey by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Kasich’s approval rating was higher than the governors of two other swing states, outpacing voters’ responses in Florida and Pennsylvania.

“While Gov. John Kasich decides whether to take the presidential plunge, he has plenty of good will left with Buckeye voters,” Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the poll, said in a statement. “With a 55 percent job approval rating, he has little to worry about at home. Voters are optimistic about Ohio’s future under Gov. Kasich.”

Connecticut-based Quinnipiac regularly gauges voters’ opinions on candidates and issues in Ohio and other swing states.

For the poll released Tuesday — the fourth by the group in the past week — Quinnipiac questioned 943 registered Ohio voters. The results have a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

Among Ohioans, 72 percent of those questioned said they were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the way things are going in the state.

Sixty percent rated the state economy as “excellent” or “good,” and 66 percent said they were optimistic about Kasich’s new term.

Forty-five percent of those polled said they are better off now compared with a year ago, compared with 30 percent who said the opposite and 24 percent who said they were about the same.

Forty percent approved of Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman’s work in office, versus 21 percent who did not. And 37 percent said he deserves re-election in 2016, versus 28 percent who said the opposite.

Portman “is 10 points short of the 50 percent job-approval mark as he begins his quest for a second term, not a place in which an incumbent likes to be,” Brown said. “He falls further behind, to 37 percent, on the more-critical question of whether he should get another six-year stretch in Washington, D.C., a number that might interest potential challengers.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown had an approval rating of 45 percent-27 percent.