New Bliss Poll: Prez Primary

The Bliss Institute at U of Akron released its 2007 Ohio Politics Survey. I'll get to the wonk-friendly questions about the difference in satisfaction between the Governor's race and the legislative races or how best to reform redistricting. Right now, let's admit we are substantively vacuous politics junkies and stampede to the 2008 Presidential horserace.

I'm not going to even try to screw around with tables in Blogger. Instead I've made jpegs of the two tables from the Bliss survey. If it's not big enough, just click on it. Or surf over to the .pdf. Here's the GOPpers:

And the Dems:

Thoughts. First off, unfortunate that we won't have a followup post-Barack swing to see what kind of momentum he's building here. There will be other polls, of course, but it's better to track trends within a particular organization's poll to mitigate the effect of differences in methodology.

Hillary is currently way out in front here in Ohio among Dems. That's somewhat consistent with the True Hillary -- the cautious centrist -- who is a lot more like an Ohio voter than Caricature Hillary is. Hillary is only slightly more popular with independents than Barack. Given his name rec, organization and resources, Edwards is frankly sucking wind.

On the other hand, nice to see Bill Richardson over five.

Over at Buckeye State there was a discussion about why Obama bothered with a swing here, given that the race is usually pretty much decided by the time we have our primary. I got to that party too late for my two cents, so here it is. Partly it's to raise money of course. But partly it's to swing these numbers. Many of the big money people want to invest in candidates who can win. If Obama looks weak in the crucial swing state, he will have a harder time at this point getting the resources he needs. If, on the other hand, he looks like the stronger candidate in Ohio, donors of the "Just Win, Baby" stripe will give to him.

Or maybe it's just because he's competing with the Kucinich juggernaut.

On the Republican side, I've gotta think that a fair number of Dems are picking their preference based on beatability rather than actual preference for President. Or do Dems really think McCain still rides the Straight Talk Express?