The Ohio Democratic Party paid for another poll by Public Policy Polling, and appears to have gotten the results that they ordered. You won’t find the poll at PPP’s website, but you can view it here.
Democrats are elated to announce that Fitzgerald is now in a tie with Kasich.
But is he really? A PPP poll that was ordered specifically by Democrats automatically should raise red flags. Forget for a moment that PPP is a left-leaning polling firm and that even statistical guru Nate Silver thinks they are garbage.
Look at their own numbers. They have released polls of this race in November, December, and now April.
In November, they had Kasich winning independents by 9 points.
In December, they said Kasich was winning indies by 13 points.
Now, in their latest poll, they say Fitz is winning independents by 7.
A 20 point swing in the independent vote? That’s not credible. There has been no major news and no advertising in this campaign that would cause such a shift.
I’ll stick with an independent and more reliable pollster like Quinnipiac. They haven’t polled this race in a while, so we’ll probably see one soon. (They’ve had Kasich winning independents consistently for months, by the way.)
I’m guessing Kasich is maintaining, and will continue to hold, a lead in the mid single digits.
