Poll shows 12th District race essentially tied

As President Donald Trump prepares to visit the 12th Congressional District in an effort to stop GOP bleeding, a new poll shows the race between Republican Troy Balderson and Democrat Danny O’Connor is neck-and-neck.

A Monmouth University Poll has Balderson up 44-43 percent, a significant tightening of the race over the past month since the poll showed the Zanesville state senator up 10 points.

“This race has definitely tightened in the past month. This is similar to the trend we saw in our polling of the Pennsylvania special election earlier this year,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, talking about a March special election in which Democrat Conor Lamb won a Republicanleaning district just across the Ohio border.

Democrats in Ohio are trying to emulate that Pennsylvania race, running a more-moderate candidate in O’Connor who has said he does not support Nancy Pelosi as U.S. House speaker if Democrats take control of the chamber.

“Despite millions of dollars in out-of-state corporate PAC money fueling false negative ads about Danny O’Connor, our grassroots campaign for new leadership is surging at just the right time,” said O’Connor campaign spokeswoman Annie Ellison in a release.

A key for O’Connor, Murray said, is that independent voters are shifting from undecided to his favor.

“We always knew this race would be close, just like we experienced in the primary,” Balderson said in a release. “Now that voters know dishonest Danny supports Nancy Pelosi for speaker, he lied about his resume, and he won’t permanently keep the middle class tax cuts, our strong grassroots army will put us over the top on August 7th.”

Trump won the 12th District, which includes northern Franklin County, Delaware, Licking and parts of four others, by 11 Balderson O’Connor

points. But the latest poll has his approval upside down, with 46 percent approval and 49 percent disapproving of his performance.

“(Trump’s) just announced plan to hold a rally (in Delaware County) this weekend could light a fire under some supporters who were planning to sit this one out,” Murray said. “It could be a gamechanger if it nets a couple of thousand additional votes for Balderson.”

Democrats have argued that they have the enthusiasm advantage, and Murray says the poll confirms that. Two-thirds of Democrats expressed a high level of interest in the race, compared with 55 percent of Republicans.

“O’Connor’s chances hinge on generating a larger than usual share of the vote from the suburbs north of Columbus,” Murray said.

O’Connor, the Franklin County recorder, is expected to do well in his home county, where nearly one-third of the district’s voters are located. The poll shows him leading 54-36 percent in the county, but in the remainder of the district, Balderson leads 48-38 percent.

While a lower voter turnout model gives Balderson a slight advantage, and a “Democratic surge” model gives O’Connor a minor advantage, none of the leads in any of the voter models is statistically significant, Murray said.

“This is still a Republican-leaning district with many metrics that continue to favor Balderson, but growing Democratic enthusiasm has made this race surprisingly competitive,” Murray said.

The poll shows Green Party candidate Joe Manchik with 2 percent.

The Monmouth Poll conducted by telephone from July 26 through Tuesday has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.