The Quinnipiac poll has support among likely voters for Gov. John Kasich at 57 percent, compared to 35 percent for Democratic Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald. But FitzGerald said that he’s not completely surprised or disillusioned by the numbers.
“We’ve always been an underdog in the election," he said. "We still are. We have a little bit more than 30 days to go. We’ve got to make our case and keep working hard. I think one of the things that’s consistent in a lot of different polling is that a lot of people still haven’t focused on this election.”
FitzGerald also said that Kasich’s numbers are still very soft, and that the voters he’s talking to don’t agree with Kasich’s positions on major issues.
“People don’t agree with the direction the state is heading," he said. "They don’t agree with a lot of his policy decisions on a number of things. And we’re hoping that once people focus on that they’ll go our way because we’re pretty confident that on most issues, people agree with us.”
Kasich has outraised FitzGerald five-to-one, and FitzGerald’s campaign has been hampered by controversies, including the tax problems of his first running mate.
This was the first poll conducted since the revelation that he didn’t have a valid driver’s license for a decade, which came after a police report from 2012 surfaced showing him parked in the early morning hours in a dark car with a woman he’s not married to.
