This poll finding is not just stunning, but important: if you run a presidential race between Barack Obama and George W. Bush in Ohio, it’s Bush by 50-42:
We’ll start rolling out our Ohio poll results tomorrow but there’s one finding on the poll that pretty much sums it up: by a 50-42 margin voters there say they’d rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama.
Independents hold that view by a 44-37 margin and there are more Democrats who would take Bush back (11%) than there are Republicans who think Obama’s preferable (3%.)
A couple months ago I thought the Pennsylvanias and Missouris and Ohios of the world were the biggest battlegrounds for 2010 but when you see numbers like this it makes you think it’s probably actually the Californias and the Wisconsins and the Washingtons.
It’s been apparent for a while that the Obama administration’s “blame Bush” strategy has been a failure, but data like this suggest that it is counterproductive.
PAUL adds: There is no better political bellwether state than Ohio. If the Democrats weren’t panicking before, they should be now.
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