Ohio voters support anti-union bill, according to poorly worded poll

With tea partiers trying to get a free rider bill on the Ohio ballot despite the skepticism of state Republican leaders like Gov. John Kasich, Quinnipiac polls the issue.

Quinnipiac. 2/7-12. MoE ±2.6 percent.

Q: Indiana recently became a "right to work" state, meaning that workers can no longer be required to join a union or pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment. Do you think that Ohio should become a "right to work" state or don't you think so?

Yes: 54
No: 40

This result is obviously frustrating, but the question wording is significant here, since it's close to ideal wording for proponents of the anti-union legislation. If you don't know that people don't have to join unions under current law, it's easy to not grasp the significance of the "or pay dues or fees" part of the question—and at that, "dues or fees" is misleading, since what non-union workers in union workplaces pay is not dues but a fee that covers the union's costs in representing them. And where Republicans are on a pretty much eternal anti-union campaign, unions and their allies have yet to mobilize against this specific bill and educate Ohio voters about what it will do. This poll, then, shows the absolute best-case scenario for people pushing the bill. It's not good news, but it's not as dire as it might look at first glance.