Politics Extra: New poll shows Blackwell gaining

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

New poll shows Blackwell gaining

From the Blackwell campaign:

NEW POLL SHOWS BLACKWELL CLOSING GAP ON STRICKLAND

COLUMBUS - The Wall Street Journal Zogby Interactive Poll today indicated gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell is closing the gap on Congressman and former prison psychologist Ted Strickland. The survey shows the race has narrowed to 5.7 points with Blackwell now receiving 41.8 percent and Strickland receiving 47.5 percent. The poll was conducted from August 29 to September 5 and has a 3.5 percent margin of error. Previous surveys have shown Strickland with a double-digit lead.

Blackwell’s campaign attributed the improvement to the start of pro-Blackwell advertising, which began August 19, and the traditional post-Labor Day spike in voter interest in political campaigns.

“Voters are catching on to Strickland’s stale ideas, empty platitudes and liberal pro-tax voting record,” said Blackwell campaign chair Lara Mastin. “And voters are responding positively to Ken Blackwell’s bold solutions to Ohio’s challenges. They are rallying around his steadfast leadership.”

“Strickland lacks the vision and leadership necessary to move Ohio forward,” added Mastin. “Ken Blackwell has substantially gained ground on Strickland and will soon be in the lead.”
Zogby International, one of the nation’s most historically accurate polling firms, touts its interactive poll as the “wave of the future in survey research.” In the 2004 presidential election, the survey accurately predicted the winner in 85 percent of the states that it polled within 4 points on average. In 2005, the poll accurately predicted the results of both the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial contests, with poll results within 2.5 points on average.

Following is a link to the poll: Wall Street Journal Zogby Interactive September Poll.

18 Comments:

at 12:04 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

Not a campaign poll, Zogby is a national product that needs to be trusted. This is very interesting. I thought once the debates started and people started seeing Blackwell and Strickland next to each other there would be a clear choice of who the better candidate was. I'm interested to see how this pans out in the month of September.

at 12:07 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

This should be titled the Blackwell spin!(second thought you guys deserve the credit)

Remember those exit polls in Ohio didn't match. That signals election fraud and Jim Crow Blackwell is guilty.

That's why he won't release his tax records, because he became a multi-millionaire. While he was supposed to serve the people of Ohio he served Diebold some nice contracts while he held stock and he also served Bush/Chenney their fake victory.

at 2:33 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

"CLEVELAND - Television host and political activist Jeff Johnson has spent much of his career supporting Democrats.

But the Ohio native on Wednesday said he's endorsing Republican Ken Blackwell in the state's governor's race over Democrat Ted Strickland, and he's encouraging other black voters to do the same.

The secretary of state's education and economic plans and his track record of hiring minorities for key positions were deciding factors, Johnson said in an interview.

"I was going about my way as I normally would as a soldier for the left prepared to support Strickland but did not get from the campaign from an agenda standpoint what I needed to be able to do that," he said.

Strickland said Johnson, who no longer lives in Ohio, may not know Blackwell well enough. He pointed out the many Ohio black leaders such as Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson who have been critical of the Republican.

"The people who really know him and know his history in Ohio and know the positions he has taken don't seem willing to support him," Strickland said in an interview.

Johnson, who grew up in Cleveland and attended college in Toledo, said he had a two-hour discussion with Blackwell and did other research.

Johnson appears weekly on Black Entertainment Television's "Rap City," where he offers social commentary. He also stars in the cable network's show "The Jeff Johnson Chronicles," which profiles issues ranging from politics to building wealth in the black community.

He spent 2004 campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, has worked as a senior adviser for People for the American Way and as national youth adviser for the NAACP."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/31/173851/873

at 2:38 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

The Zogby 'interactive' polls have been widely discredited. This poll has consitantly shown a narrow gap between the two candidates. Every other independent poll, however, consistantly shows Strickland with a 20+ point lead. These polls, which include ones conducted by the University of Cincinnati, The Columbus Dispatch, The cleveland Plain Dealer and Syrvey USA, are all conventional telephone polls, the gold standard of the industry.

If you are going to print Blackwell press releases you really should label it as such. Your bias is showing. Again.

at 2:48 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

What's more, these conventional polls consistantly show a disturbing trend for Blackwell; while Strickland gains 89% of Democratic voters support, Blackwell only gains 71% of Republican voters,with nearly 20% of Republicans crossing over to vote for Strickland. Blackwell's in deep trouble, and all of the Enquirer's spin won't save him.

at 2:53 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

Fritz Wenzel (of T.Blade/ Coingate, Jean Schmidt fame) Now Working for Zogby

Saving Ohio

Did a reporter with GOP ties suppress a story that could have cost Bush the White House?

By Bill Frogameni

Pages 1 2

October 6, 2005 | In April 2005, the Blade newspaper of Toledo, Ohio, began publishing a remarkable series of articles about a well-connected Republican donor, Tom Noe, chair of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign for Lucas County, which encompasses Toledo. The Blade, which had won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 2004, discovered that Noe, a Toledo coin dealer, was investing $50 million for the state through the novel practice of coin speculation: buying and selling rare coins to turn a profit. Noe, the Blade revealed, could not account for $10 million to $13 million in the fund.

The paper also divulged that Noe had been placed under federal investigation for allegedly laundering money -- perhaps state money -- to the Bush campaign. The Blade's initial reports on Noe started a chain reaction of related scandals for Ohio's dominant Republicans. Recently, Gov. Bob Taft pleaded no contest to accepting several gifts from influence peddlers -- including Noe -- without reporting them, as law requires. Noe is currently the subject of 13 investigations.

In November 2004, Lucas County was among the most hotly contested areas in the most hotly contested state. Kerry won the county by 45,000 votes, but George W. Bush went on to win Ohio by less than 120,000 votes, which swung the election for him.

But Bush's reelection may have been made possible by a Blade reporter with close ties to the Republican Party who reportedly knew about Noe's potential campaign violations in early 2004 but suppressed the story.

According to several knowledgeable sources, the Blade's chief political columnist, Fritz Wenzel, was told of Noe's potential campaign violations as early as January 2004. But according to Blade editors, Wenzel never gave the paper the all-important tip in early 2004.

SNIP

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/10/06/ohio/index.html

*********
July 31, 2005

Schmidt Advisor Connected to Noe: It's Even More Money Than Reported

By DHinMI

Atrios is linking to a report about a Toledo Blade editor connected to Ohio Coingate figure Tom Noe who Ohio Republican Congressional candidate Jeannette Schmidt is reported to have paid $60,000 in consulting fees the week he retired from The Blade. But that's not all of the money this guy's received from Schmidt. And there are some questions that should be asked.

First, what we're talking about, the original report from Editor and Publisher:

The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, is on top of the news- paper world, thanks to its "Coingate" reports (see p. 34). But while the paper is rightly thumping its chest with each new revelation, it's also coming under some scrutiny — not for what it has printed, but for what it may not have. Rumors swirl around a veteran Blade scribe, former political reporter Fritz Wenzel. Nothing at all is proven, but it's worth recalling the dangers — even if it's just in public perception — of jumping from political campaigning to political reporting and back again.

Wenzel, a longtime GOP campaign worker in Oregon, spent 10 years on the Blade politics beat before returning to the world of political consulting in May, virtually the day after he left the paper. One of the key contacts he made along the way was the man now at the center of the Coingate accusations, Tom Noe, a major Republican fund-raiser who attended the wedding of Wenzel's son, P.J., a state GOP employee. Noe's wife, Bernadette, even praised Wenzel during a GOP Lincoln Day Dinner this spring. "It was obvious that was a Republican, he never hid the fact," Dennis Lang, interim chair of the Lucas County Republican Central Committee, told me last month. "But his work stayed in neutral ground."

SNIP

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/07/schmidt_advisor.html

*******************

So, there's lots to suggest that Wenzel was in a business and political client/consultant relationship with Schmidt well before he wrote his last column for the Toledo Blade. That's a serious problem for the credibility of the Blade. But it's also something The Blade, if it has contractual restrictions on the outside work that can be done by its reporters and editors, should look in to regarding Fritz Wenzel, because it's hard to believe he wasn't working for Schmidt until after he left his job with the newspaper.

Zogby International spokesman Fritz Wenzel said that was the case in July when Syracuse Post-Standard reporter Glenn Coin wrote a story about Vice President Cheney’s visit to Utica for a fundraiser for Meier. Wenzel was quoted extensively in the article.

http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=13587

at 3:32 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

In the 2nd CD primary, a Zogby poll, paid for by McEwen, was far more accurate (it was actually within the MOE) than the Channel 9 Survey USA polls. Zogby had McEwen down by 3; he lost by 6. Survey USA had Schmidt winning a clear majority of the vote and blowing McEwen away by over 20% in every poll they did. McEwen lost by 6 and Schmidt, thanks to the protest campaigns, was kept under 50%.

at 6:00 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

"If you are going to print Blackwell press releases you really should label it as such. Your bias is showing. Again."

on a scale of 1-10 how stupid are you. It says right at the begining

"From the Blackwell campaign:"

it is a press release clearly marked. And to think that your vote is actually worth as much as someone who can read

at 9:46 PM, September 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

Compare the Wikipedia entries for Blackwell and Strickland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Blackwell

On March 1, 2006 Blackwell's office accidentally published a list of 1.2 million Social Security numbers of Ohio citizens on a website along with their business filings. A Federal class-action lawsuit was filed by Darrell Estep who claimed that the release of the data had caused his Social Security number to appear three times on the website. [60] The lawsuit was settled on March 28, 2006 after the numbers were removed from the website, a registration process was enacted to view the data and Blackwell's office agreed to make monthly progress reports to the court. [61] The data was a part of a centralized voter database, which is required by Federal law. At that time, Blackwell promised to only retain the last four digits of the Social Security number in the database to prevent future problems. [62]

However, on April 26, 2006, it was discovered that Blackwell's office had again, accidentally mailed out computer disks containing the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of 7.7 million registered voters in Ohio. [63] The list was intended to be used by political activism groups to contact voters with campaign information. Blackwell's office recalled the twenty disks that were sent out with Blackwell's assurance that the privacy of voters was intact. [64]

Jim Petro, the Republican Attorney General of Ohio, has launched an investigation into the accidental disclosure citing a legal requirement to "investigate any state entity where there may be a risk of a loss of private data." Blackwell stated that he considered the issue to be closed, but Petro disagreed saying that he will use "maximum due dilgence" to ensure that the data was not copied before it was returned. Ohio law requires that individuals be notified if their Social Security numbers are compromised

Blackwell has taken some very conservative positions. In 2005, he supported keeping Terri Schiavo on life support indefinitely, saying, "I really do think that life is sacred, no matter how painful." When asked on Hardball with Chris Matthews if he would keep her on life support for 30 years, Blackwell said he would.

Terri Schiavo was on Medicaid and her care cost $100,000 a year.>

In his 2002 campaign for re-election to the post of Secretary of State, Blackwell took the position that he would favor abortions in the case where the life of the mother was at stake. He has since taken a more hard line position of opposing abortions even in the case where the mother's life is at stake.

On April 16, 2006, the Toledo Blade reported that Blackwell has accepted more than $1 million dollars in campaign contributions from "employees of firms seeking business with the statewide offices he's held over the past 12 years." Furthermore, the same organizations donated $1.34 million dollars to the Ohio Republican Party, $1.29 million of which was forwarded directly to Blackwell's campaign fund. Several of the firms which have been awarded contracts from Blackwell's office have also been hired on to his gubernatorial campaign. The investigators argue that the suggestion of quid pro quo based on the actions of contributors raise an issue of a serious conflict of interest. Petro has responded by demanding that a law which bans political contributors from being awarded state contracts. Blackwell has stated that no illegal activity took place. In response to Petro's call for reform, Blackwell stated "If you are asking me ... 'Am I advocating for campaign spending limits?' No. Never have. Never will.."

at 6:18 AM, September 13, 2006

Anonymous said...

Dear Republican Voters who live in Hamilton County,

If you truly believe that Ohio, which has the third highest tax burden of any state in the nation and yet, at the same time ranks near dead last in numerous economic indicators is in good shape right now... Then you need to vote for Ken Blackwell. But remember, it wasn't a Democratic Governor or State Legislature that made things what they are today. It was a Republican one.

We have a Republican President, a Republican Vice President, a Republican US Senate, a Republican US House of Representatives, a Republican Supreme Court and most of the nation's Governors and State Legislatures are Republican. And yet we still have abortion, gay marriage and a tax code that is badly broken. If you truly believe that Ken Blackwell is not just campaigning, but that (after all these years) he is suddenly going to change and start producing positive results for the State of Ohio, then you need to vote for Ken Blackwell.

I could write things to you all day long and never possibly reach many of you. But we only need to reach some of you so that we can start to improve the lives of all people.

I know Ted Strickland and will be proud to cast my vote for him in November. And nobody ever called me a liberal.

Politics don't work on people like me and they won't work on Ted Strickland. Think before you waste your vote. If now is not time for a change...

A Man who truly cares about the people who live in Ohio.

at 9:10 AM, September 13, 2006

Anonymous said...

It's Strickland's voting record the past oh 12 years or so he's been in Congress that assures me he is campaigning. I'd challenge you to look at who the most Liberal members of Congress are, and see where Strickland falls on that list. There are many, sound, independent surveys out there that will tell you he is one of the most, close to Kucinich, Liberal congressman in the House.

at 9:37 AM, September 13, 2006

Anonymous said...

Blackwell, as OH Secretary of State, has proven uncapable of administering elections competently in 88 counties so why would anyone want to cast a vote to put in in control of the entire state.

Don't believe me, read his own investigation into just one Ohio county:

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/lucas.htm

This report includes the fact that REPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS were allowed UNSUPERVISED ACCESS to UNSECURED BALLOTS prior to the election, as well as this list:

*failure to maintain ballot security
*Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation .
*failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
*issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms.
*manipulation of the process involving the 3% recount.
*disjointed implementation of the Directive regarding the removal of Nader and Camejo from the ballot .
*failure to properly issue hospital ballots in accordance with statutory requirements.
*failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass
*failure to examine campaign finance reports in a timely manner.
*failure to guard and protect public documents ....etc.

THIS IS PURE INCOMPETENCE AND POOR LEADERSHIP!

at 11:22 AM, September 13, 2006

Anonymous said...

Who can trust the fishwrap when they don't disclose that this is a black-well press release ?

Who can now trust Zogby when the staff is riddled with wRong wingnut operatives ?

Enough to make one sick !

Just don't let this illness effect your family because:

You can't TRUST blackwell

at 11:28 AM, September 13, 2006

Anonymous said...

Sherrod Brown gave out marijuana brownies when he was SOS, so maybe they all didn't start incompetent, but we can be sure they got to that point.

at 9:57 PM, September 13, 2006

Anonymous said...

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity sure have some people trained. Just mention or say the word liberal and they stop thinking.

With republicans in charge of all 3 branches of government and all you got in exchange for your tax cuts was an astronomical deficit. Don't tax but spend Republicans

The Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003

The Medicare Prescription Drug Act, is a product of the culture of corruption that has infected Washington.

Key Cost Estimates Were Withheld. During the legislative debate, President Bush, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Tom Scully repeatedly assured Congress and the public that the Medicare drug benefit would not cost more than $400 billion over ten years. In fact, the Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, was correctly predicting that the legislation would cost far more, perhaps as much as $600 billion. Mr. Scully threatened Mr. Foster with the loss of his job if he shared this information with congressional Democrats.According to the Government Accountability Office, this action and the withholding of the cost estimates violated multiple federal laws.

The Vote Was Held Open for Three Hours in the Dead of Night. H.R. 1 was brought before the House for final passage at 3 a.m. on November 22, 2003. Instead of the 15 minutes usually reserved for roll call votes, the House Republican leadership held open the vote for an unprecedented three hours while pressuring Republican members to change their votes.

Key Republican Chairmen Accepted Lucrative Jobs with the Pharmaceutical Industry. Two key Republican chairmen also accepted jobs representing the pharmaceutical industry after passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Act. Former Rep. Billy Tauzin, who was the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the lead House sponsor of the bill, left Congress to become the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the drug industry's biggest trade group. Former Rep. James Greenwood, who was the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, left Congress to become the president the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the trade association of the biotechnology industry.

With republicans like these, who needs enemies?

at 11:00 PM, September 13, 2006

Anonymous said...

"Who can trust the fishwrap when they don't disclose that this is a black-well press release ?"

again i have to ask how stupid you are. it says "from the blackwell campaign" on the top of the article.

are there any intelligent democratic voters at all?

at 9:34 AM, September 14, 2006

Anonymous said...

Funny, but this poll differs greatly from others (was discussed on NPR this morning). Could it be that the GOP is getting the public ready for a big surprise in November?
CHECK OUT THIS PRINCETON VIDEO SHOWING HOW EASY IT IS TO FLIP THE VOTE ON THE MACHINES THAT KEN BLACKWELL RECOMMENDED (AND MANY WILL USE IN NOV:

http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/videos.html

at 11:19 PM, September 15, 2006

Anonymous said...

Didn't Zogby screw up its exit polls in the 2004 election?
Isn't Fritz "Weasel" Wentzel (the Blade reporter who looked the other way on Noegate in 2004 and then worked for Schmidt in 2005) working for Zogby?
A REAL independent poll, I'm sure.........

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

New poll shows Blackwell gaining

18 Comments: