A new independent poll of likely voters shows some bad news for Democratic candidate for governor Ed FitzGerald. The latest Quinnipiac poll has likely voters backing Republican incumbent John Kasich at 57 percent, compared to 35 percent for FitzGerald, the Democratic Cuyahoga County Executive. The poll also shows Kasich gets support from a full quarter of Democratic voters, and nearly half of those surveyed say they still don’t know enough about FitzGerald to form an opinion. FitzGerald says he always knew he’d be the underdog in this race, but his campaign is still out talking to voters.
“People don’t agree with the direction the state is heading,” says Fitzgerald. “They don’t agree with a lot of his policy decisions on a number of things. And we’re hoping that once people focus on that they’ll go our way because we’re pretty confident that on most issues people agree with us.”
This was the first Quinnipiac poll conducted since the revelation that Fitzgerald didn’t have a valid driver’s license for a decade, which came after a police report from 2012 surfaced showing him parked in the early morning hours in a car with a woman he’s not married to. And the poll shows Kasich, who has five times the money that FitzGerald does, far ahead among men, women and independent voters.
