Latest poll: Josh Mandel and Sherrod Brown tied at 43

BOOM.

Gone are the days of Sherrod Brown holding a double digit lead over Josh Mandel. According to a new Rasmussen poll of likely voters, they are tied at 43% each.

Republican Josh Mandel, in the first Rasmussen Reports survey since his decisive primary victory, is now running neck-and-neck with Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race.

The latest telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Buckeye State finds Brown and Mandel each with 43% support. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and another 11% are undecided.

Josh is officially the nominee now, and as I've been saying for months now, this race is going to be very competitive, be very closely watched nationwide, and potentially determine who controls the Senate next year.

While the two candidates may be tied, this poll is disastrous news for Sherrod Brown. Because he is the incumbent, there's no way he and his campaign are comfortable sitting at 43%. In fact, those numbers have to be downright scary for him and Connie. While there was no incumbent in the 2010 Senate race, lets take a look at where we stood in March then.

The latest poll from Scott Rasmussen of likely Ohio voters shows Portman once again with a lead over his potential Democratic rivals [read: Lee Fisher], up 44-39.

While both Portman and Fisher improved their standing among their own Party, it was Portman's big jump among Independents that helped entrench his lead over the Democrat.

We aren't too far off of those numbers. Portman went on to destroy Lee Fisher. Now, Brown is very unlikely to implode like Lee Fisher did. However, the two are similar in the sense that both have been on Ohio ballots for decades and both are unabashed liberals, far to the left of Ohio's moderate electorate.

Oh, there was also this other incumbent Ohioan in March of 2010 who was polling at 43% against his opponent. His name was Ted Strickland. Even worse news for Brown? Ted was winning that poll by 5 points.

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