It’s been a scramble to the finish line for Ohio’s recently created August special election. Voters will decide on Issue 1, which would raise the threshold for amending the Ohio constitution from 50% plus 1 to 60%. Advocates for Issue 1 have said this is a direct response to efforts to get constitutional protections for abortion access passed this November. Thanks to new polling data released this week, we have an idea of how Ohio voters feel about abortion access and making it harder to amend the Constitution. Not surprisingly, polling found voters are split.
The poll was conducted by Scripps News/YouGov. It found more than one-third of Ohioans polled agree it should be harder to amend the state constitution. That position polled one point higher than those who disagree with Issue 1. About one-fourth of those surveyed weren’t sure.
When you look at the breakdown by political party, the divide is clear. More than 6 in 10 Republicans want to make it harder to amend the Constitution. About a quarter of Democrats agree. As for those in the middle, they’re leaning toward no. More than one-third of those who identified as Independent are against Issue 1, versus 29% who came out in favor of it.
On the other side of this issue are those trying to get constitutional protections for abortion access in Ohio. A petition drive is aiming to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would grant constitutional protections to Ohioans to make their own decisions on issues like abortion, contraception, and fertility. When asked about that issue, 58% of those polled supported it and 23% were against it.
You may know we don’t usually report on polls here at News 5 because they can be pretty unreliable when it comes to predicting actual election results. Since this poll was Ohio-specific, centered on an issue so many people are passionate about, and conducted by Scripps News, we decided to share these results. We also want to explain how the poll was conducted.
It happened over three days, from Tuesday, June 20, through Thursday, June 23. YouGov interviewed 544 people and then pulled a final data set from a sample of 500. That final sample represented every gender, age, race, and education level, proportionate to Ohio’s population. The results were weighted to account for historically under-sampled and over-sampled sub-populations, like Republicans and Democrats in our state.
You can look at the complete results here.
And check out the methodology behind the polling here.
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