Dayton Business Journal...
Newt Gingrich leads pack in latest Ohio poll
by Jeff Bell, Staff reporter
Thursday, December 8, 2011 

A new poll delivers good news for Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich when it comes to winning the hearts of voters in Ohio, a key swing state in the 2012 race for the White House. 

The poll by Quinnipiac University shows the former U.S. House speaker leading the Republican primary field here with 36 percent support, twice the 18 percent shown for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. No other candidate in the crowded field topped 7 percent. 

Both Gingrich and Romney would edge President Barack Obama by identical 43-to-42 percent margins. 

“The White House is very concerned about the Buckeye State because of the large numbers of whites without college educations – a group among which Obama has been doing poorly,” Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a release. 

He said the White House has been dispatching Vice President Joe Biden to help with those voters, but Biden’s favorable/unfavorable rating in Ohio is a negative 34/40 percent. 

But Brown also said Republicans have some fence-mending to do because of the strongly negative image the party and its leader, Gov. John Kasich, picked up in the fight over the state budget and union rights in the Senate Bill 5 brouhaha. 

Other findings in the poll include: 

• Ohio voters disapprove of the job Obama is doing by a 55-to-41 percent margin and, by 53 to 42 percent, feel he does not deserve reelection. 

• 50 percent of Ohio Republicans view the economy as the most important issue with 31 to 24 percent believing Gingrich rather than Romney would do the best job among GOP contenders on the economy. 

• Republicans, by a 51-to-11 percent margin, feel Gingrich would do a better job on foreign policy than Romney. 

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