PARMA, OHIO — The Ohio Republican primary next week promises to be a barn-burner if the polls are correct. The latest poll shows Kasich currently leading Trump, but overall it’s a mixed picture.
Clashing polls
Four polls have come out in the past three days. Three show Trump in first place, while one poll shows Kasich leading. Cruz is in third (in the teens) in all four, while Rubio is in fourth (in single digits) in all four.
So the only question is whether Kasich or Trump wins.
Kasich’s lead — 34% to 29% in the Fox News poll — comes in the most recent poll (March 5-8), and the poll with the largest sample size (806 likely voters). Trump’s highest poll — 41% in the CNN survey — comes in the least recent poll (March 2-6) with the smallest sample size (359 LV) and a margin of error of ±5.
Kasich hovers between 32 and 35 in all four polls. Trump, however, shows hints of a slide, from 41% in the oldest poll to 38% in the two more recent polls, down to 29%.
That 38% to 29% Trump drop is hard to swallow. There’s little reason to believe that Trump lost 9 points in a couple of days. This suggests polling error by Fox. It seems to boil down to this: Trump is in the mid-to-upper 30s, while Kasich is in the mid-to-lower 30s, with six days to go. In those six days, there could be some serious movement.
Ohioans like Kasich
The Fox poll suggests that 11 percent of the Ohio electorate favors Trump and has Kasich as their second choice. Meanwhile 7 percent are Kasich-then-Trump voters.
This could matter in one of two ways. It could mean that Kasich is actually winning over Trump supporters, which would explain Trump’s fall. But that’s assuming a lot.
More concretely, those numbers mean that of the 21% for whom Kasich is the second choice, half are currently Rubio or Cruz backers. That suggests that strategic anti-Trump voting and momentum could provide Kasich with even more voters.
Kasich’s 79 percent approval rating in the Fox poll also bodes well for his chances.
The PPP poll shows Kasich beating Trump 55 to 40 in a theoretical head-to-head. If Rubio and Cruz fall as voters in this winner-take-all try to settle on a winner, that would certainly help Kasich.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
