With lawmakers back from their summer recess, the question continues to be when or if they’ll take up Medicaid expansion, which Republican Gov. John Kasich and Democrats have pushed for. This week, Sen. Dave Burke (R-Marysville) introduced a new measure that he says will keep the program’s growth in check. But Medicaid expansion is not in his new bill. However, late on Friday, Gov. John Kasich did as many expected he would and announced he would take Medicaid expansion to the Controlling Board on October 21. And what may be the final report on Cleveland kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro is out - and it says two guards didn’t do required checks on him and falsified logs to show they had. And it suggests that he may not have intended to commit suicide.
We are 13 months out from next year’s huge election. And as always, polling will play a critical role in those campaigns – and in fact already has. But why polling so early and so often – and how do polls determine the directions of campaigns and candidates? To talk about those issues and more are two experts in the science of polling. Paul Beck is a distinguishes professor of social and behavioral sciences and a professor of political science at Ohio State University, and is an expert in polling and polling data. Mark Weaver is a national political consultant who has written, directed, or interpreted thousands of polls over the last three decades. For the last 16 years, he's taught graduate students about polling at the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.