Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
0000017a-3b40-d913-abfe-bf44a4f90000Howard Wilkinson joined the WVXU news team as the politics reporter and columnist in April 2012 , after 30 years of covering local, state and national politics for The Cincinnati Enquirer. On this page, you will find his weekly column, Politically Speaking; the Monday morning political chats with News Director Maryanne Zeleznik and other news coverage by Wilkinson. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Wilkinson has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nominating conventions. Along with politics, Wilkinson also covered the 2001 Cincinnati race riots, the Lucasville prison riot in 1993, the Air Canada plane crash at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1983, and the 1997 Ohio River flooding. And, given his passion for baseball, you might even find some stories about the Cincinnati Reds here from time to time.

Poll: Kasich the slight favorite of Ohio Republicans for president

Andy Chow
/
Ohio Statehouse News Bureau

An independent pollreleased this morning shows that while Ohio Gov. John Kasich is the slight favorite for the Republican presidential nomination among Ohio GOP voters, he barely registers with Republicans in other key states.

The Quinnipiac University poll showed that Kasich as the favorite of 14 percent of the Ohio Republican polls, it is not much of a lead. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had 11 percent support, while former Florida governor Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky are at 10 percent. Eight other potential GOP contenders finished under 10 percentage points.

Quinnipiac’s polling institute, which regularly polls voters in key battleground states, had Kasich dead last in Florida and tied for ninth place with three percent support in Pennsylvania, his native state.

Bush led the pack in Florida with 32 percent support, followed by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida with 15 percent. Bush had a slim two percentage point lead over New Jersey governor Chris Christie among Pennsylvania Republicans.

“Taken as a whole, there is no clear leader for the Republican presidential nomination in these three critical swing states,’’ Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, said in a release.

On the Democratic side, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the clear favorite of Democrats, with 51 percent support in Ohio. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warner had 14 percent support, while Vice President Joe Biden had seven percent support.

The poll was conducted Sunday among 943 registered Ohio voters – 28 percent of them Democrats, 26 percent Republicans, 32 percent independents and 13 percent who would not say. The margin of error among the Republican voters is plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.