Ted Strickland plots a comeback

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland would beat U.S. Sen. Rob Portman if the Senate election were held today, a new Quinnipiac University poll says.

(Gus Chan/Plain Dealer Publishing Co.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Sen. Rob Portman faces a tough reelection with the challenge from former Gov. Ted Strickland, who would win if voters decided today, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

The poll, part of a series that Quinnipiac has rolled out over the last week, also asked about marijuana legalization, which Ohioans support. We will have more on the marijuana questions in a separate article.

In the Senate race, Strickland would get 48 percent of the vote to Portman's 39 percent, while another 10 percent said they don't know and 3 percent said they wouldn't vote.

Strickland, a Democrat, is being challenged by another Democrat, Cincinnati City Council member P.G. Sittenfeld, for the right to challenge Portman, a Republican. If Sittenfeld were on the ballot instead of Strickland, Portman would win 47-24.

But another 24 percent said they didn't know which candidate would get their vote in a Portman-Sittenfeld contest. Sittenfeld is a blank slate, with a massive 89 percent of voters saying they don't know enough about him.

Portman's challenge in a race against Strickland is twofold, according to the poll results. He doesn't have a problem with his fellow Republicans, 79 percent of whom said they would vote for him rather than Strickland.

But he does with self-identified independents, 50 percent of whom would vote for Strickland.

Only 32 percent of independents said they would vote for Portman, although another 15 percent said they don't know which candidate they would support .

This is only one poll and the election is 17 months away. But if it mirrors private polling, it helps explain why Portman and the Republican Party are trying to remind Ohioans of the job losses that occurred when Strickland was governor and the American economy was suffering. Whether Strickland's fault or not, Republicans want voters to associate Strickland with those times.

But Portman may have a deeper problem -- the second challenge that this poll suggests. Ohio voters feel that they know Strickland, and 49 percent said they have a favorable opinion of him. Yet only 38 percent had a favorable opinion of Portman, a freshman senator in his fifth year.

Portman previously was a trade ambassador and budget director for President George W. Bush, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving a Cincinnati-area district.

A larger share of Ohio voters, 44 percent, said they had not heard enough about Portman. Fifty-three percent of independents felt that way. (They could start here and here if they want to change that.)

The good news for Portman is that over time, his favorability rating has improved. It may be 38 percent now, but it was 26 percent in 2012 and 2010.

Corry Bliss, Portman's campaign manager, issued a statement this morning that said the poll "shows one thing and one thing only, Ohio is doing so much better since Ted Strickland left office that people forgot what an awful governor he was."

"Our campaign will have the resources to remind every voter about Strickland's term in office when over 350,000 jobs disappeared, Ohio lagged behind 47 other states in job creation and he raised taxes by $800 million. Rob Portman's fight to expand opportunity for Ohio workers is gaining strength every day. Last week we announced a network of grassroots leaders in each of Ohio's 88 counties and since this campaign launched we've added thousands of supporters who are eager to stop Ted Strickland from taking Ohio backward."

None of these numbers comes close to the positive ratings of Ohio's current governor, John Kasich. Sixty-one percent of Ohio voters approve of the job he's doing.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who doesn't face reelection until 2018, also gets positive ratings for his job performance: 52 percent. That's an improvement over the last year, but Brown had similar positive numbers in 2009, 2011 and 2012.

As for Portman, job performance may also be a ray of light. The question of how he's performing his job is different from the poll question of whether voters have an overall favorable or unfavorable opinion of him. On job performance, Portman gets a 49 percent approval rating, his highest in Quinnipiac polling since he has been senator.

Quinnipiac pollsters surveyed 1,077 self-identified registered voters March 17-28. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.