ADA, OH (WLIO) - An organization at Ohio Northern University put together a poll for Ohio voters to gauge their opinion on a variety of topics. Our Katie Honigford has more on what they found.
The Institute for Civics & Public Policy, or ICAPP, at Ohio Northern University, put together the "Northern Poll", a web-based poll that was taken by Ohio voters earlier in October.
Over 600 people took part in answering the several questions posed by the poll, covering topics like ongoing races in the state of Ohio and the environment of political discussion.
Students, including the ICAPP fellows at ONU, helped to organize the poll and put together the data that was collected. Their involvement is something that political science professor rob alexander says is a way for them to think more about the "Why" surrounding these questions.
“I was trying to convey to them - what is it that people on the other side want to know about, and what is our role in trying to get information out to the American people and certainly to Ohio voters,” said Dr. Alexander. “Also we started thinking about what the media might be looking for; what are media narratives, why are they asking these questions, and what would the narratives be around that? Also I tried to convey to them how careful you need to be, because all kinds of things can be taken in all kinds of different ways.”
One of the big topics in the poll was the race between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Ryan for the spot in the senate currently held by Rob Portman. Students involved with the poll were pretty surprised to see their results showed Ryan holding a 43% lead over Vance's 41%.
“We found that Tim Ryan is pulling slightly ahead of J.D. Vance and now that we’ve looked at some pools more recently, it’s not as it’s not as surprising - but as we were discussing questions before the poll was coming out, Vance was still pulling way ahead of Tim Ryan, so it’s really interesting to see in the last couple of weeks that Ryan has kind of taken a little bit of a lead,” said Adam Myers, senior at Ohio Northern.
The poll also found that 70% of people surveyed are afraid to talk about politics and 78% believe that it is as toxic as it has ever been in their lifetimes.
And of course, not only did these students gain some insight into what's on some voters' minds right now, but they also got some experience in the process.
“I think the biggest take away for me is just the process behind everything, whether it’s how you put together the poll or thinking of how you’re going to use the information you get out of the poll for different potential headlines,” said Nicholas Baughman, a junior at Ohio Northern.
The full results of the poll can be found on the Ohio Northern University's website.
