CNN: Big leads for Ohio Democrats

The two Democrats at the top of the ticket in Ohio – Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland – hold double-digit leads over their opponents with a week to go, according to a CNN state poll released this morning.

Brown, the Lorain congressman who is challenged incumbent Republican Mike DeWine, has an 11 percentage point lead among likely voters, the poll said.

Strickland’s lead is even greater – 23 percentage points, with 59 percent of likely voters saying they will vote for him, compared to 36 percent for Republican Ken Blackwell.

The telephone poll, conducted for CNN by Opinion Research Corp., was conducted between last Thursday and Sunday. A random sample of 1,026 Ohioans were interviewed and filtered down to 542 likely voters. The margin of error in the poll is plus or minus four percent.