COLUMBUS — The contest has tightened, but if the election was held today, Ohio voters would still reject the state’s controversial new law restricting public-employee collective bargaining, according to a poll released Tuesday.
The latest Quinnipiac Poll revealed a 13-point gap between support and opposition for Senate Bill 5, down from a 24-point gap in late July. Fifty-one percent of registered voters questioned said they’d vote to kill the law while 38 percent said they want to keep it.
The poll is the first to be released since both sides went on the air in the battle for the hearts and minds of Ohio voters with competing ads that argue that the law is a deliberate attempt to demonize public workers or that the law is necessary to reset a system that now weighs too heavily in favor of unions.
“Backers of SB 5 have only six weeks to make up the difference, although public opinion appears to be moving in their direction,’’ said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
“The referendum on SB 5 is also a referendum on John Kasich,’’ he said. The latest poll suggests that Mr. Kasich remains unpopular with voters, as is his idea to lease the Ohio Turnpike to a private operator in exchange for a lump sum payment to the state.
More people disapprove of his performance than approve. Just 40 percent of registered voters give the Republican governor a thumbs-up, while 49 percent turn thumbs down. His approval rating is up 5 points from July, and his disapproval number is down 1 point.
“Ohio voters seem to be warming a little toward John Kasich, although he is still under water when it comes to public opinion,’’ Mr. Brown said. “The governor still has more than three years left until he faces the voters again, and his numbers are moving in the right direction.’’
A large reason for his low approval numbers comes, not surprisingly, from union households who are in the middle of the fight over Senate Bill 5, and women.
By a margin of 56 percent to 32 percent, voters reject the idea of leasing the toll road across northern Ohio to a private entity.
All of these results are outside the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. Quinnipiac, which has been watching Ohio and other key presidential battleground states, interviewed 1,301 registered voters from Sept. 20 to 25, well after the Senate Bill 5 ad blitz began.
The referendum on the collective bargaining law will appear as Issue 2 on the Nov. 8 ballot.
While registering general disapproval of the massive law, voters still say they like portions of it — substituting a performance pay system for automatic salary increases based on longevity, requiring workers to pay
15 percent of their health care premiums, and requiring workers to pay at least 10 percent of their pay toward their pensions.
However, they don’t like the ban on all public employee strikes, eliminating seniority as the sole factor determining the order of layoffs, and taking health care off the negotiating table.
First Published September 27, 2011, 1:05 p.m.
