Ohio's hotly contested Senate race is a dead heat between Republican incumbent Mike DeWine and Democratic U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, according to a poll released Wednesday.
The Quinnipiac University poll found that 45 percent of likely Ohio voters favored Brown, while 44 percent backed DeWine and 11 percent were undecided.
The telephone poll of 876 likely voters, taken between Sept. 11-17, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Crucial congressional control race
A USA Today/Gallup poll released Sept. 1 had Brown slightly ahead of DeWine, 46 percent to 40 percent.
The race between DeWine, a two-term senator, and Brown, who represents a Cleveland-area House district, is considered crucial for both parties as 33 Senate seats are up for grabs, with Democrats needing to pick up six seats to take control.
The new poll found that DeWine and Brown are in a statistical tie among independent voters. Of those, 62 percent said their view of Brown is either mixed or they don't know enough about him to form an opinion, while 45 percent of independents felt that way about DeWine.
"How well each candidate does with independent voters will likely decide the election," said Peter Brown, the institute's assistant director.
Women supported Sherrod Brown 48 percent to DeWine's 40 percent, while men gave DeWine a 49 percent-41 percent edge, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
The politics of the president
The poll also found that 55 percent of likely voters disapprove of the way President Bush is handling the war in Iraq, and 50 percent said going to war in the first place was the wrong thing to do.
But relatively few voters surveyed said the war influenced their choice of Senate candidates. Brown's supporters said other issues - not defined in the survey - were their main concerns. DeWine's experience accounted for most of his support.
Brown has voted against the Iraq war, criticized DeWine for not questioning the intelligence that led to the invasion and has called on the president to develop an exit strategy.
DeWine, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is generally supportive of Bush's policies in Iraq. On Tuesday, he joined other senators on the intelligence panel in asking a government commission to declassify more information from two Senate reports on prewar intelligence on Iraq, saying too much was kept secret.
The two candidates will debate on NBC's Meet the Press, on Sunday, October 12st.
