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0000017a-3b40-d913-abfe-bf44a4f90000Howard Wilkinson joined the WVXU news team as the politics reporter and columnist in April 2012 , after 30 years of covering local, state and national politics for The Cincinnati Enquirer. On this page, you will find his weekly column, Politically Speaking; the Monday morning political chats with News Director Maryanne Zeleznik and other news coverage by Wilkinson. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Wilkinson has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nominating conventions. Along with politics, Wilkinson also covered the 2001 Cincinnati race riots, the Lucasville prison riot in 1993, the Air Canada plane crash at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1983, and the 1997 Ohio River flooding. And, given his passion for baseball, you might even find some stories about the Cincinnati Reds here from time to time.

Poll: FitzGerald trails Kasich by 22% with less than five weeks to go

With less than five weeks to go before election day, the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, Ed FitzGerald, trails Republican incumbent John Kasich by 22 percentage points, according to an independent poll released Wednesday.

Perhaps the worst news in Quinnipiac University’s poll of likely Ohio voters is that one out of four Democrats surveyed said they would vote for the Republican Kasich.

“Ohio Gov. Kasich, who hit some bumps in the road early in his first term, looks like he’s on a freeway to an easy re-election victory,’’ Peter A. Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a release.

Kasich’s lead among male voters stands at 31 percent, while women voters favor Kasich over FitzGerald by 52 percent to 39 percent. Brown said that is “something almost unheard of in this era of the gender gap.”

The Quinnipiac Poll gave Kasich a positive favorable rating of 54 percent to 30 percent among likely voters, while FitzGerald had a negative favorable rating of 21 percent to 29 percent, with 48 percent saying they don’t know enough about the Democratic candidate – who is the Cuyahoga County Executive – to form an opinion of him.

Brown said this poll does not bode well for the rest of the Democrats who are challenging Republican incumbents for other statewide offices.

“If Kasich wins by 20 percent or more, it will be difficult for any of the under ticket Democrats to survive,’’ Brown said.

The Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute conducts polling in a number of state that are considered key battleground states in presidential elections.

This poll was conducted between Sept. 24-29 among 999 likely Ohio voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percent. Both land line and cell phones were called in the survey.

You can read the full poll here.

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.