OH tea party disputes polls showing Dem far ahead

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown is enjoying a comfortable double-digit lead over his Republican challenger in Ohio, but a tea party leader in the state insists the polls are wrong.

In a compilation of polls by RealClearPolitics, the reputable political website, Brown is up by 13.5 points over U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci. 

The incumbent senator, in fact, has led every poll by double digits since February.

But some are holding out hope for Renacci, recalling that Hillary Clinton was favored to win Ohio by double digits.

Tom Zawistowski, executive director of the Portage County Tea Party, says there wasn't a single poll in 2016 predicting a Trump win and some polls predicted she would sweep the state by 11 points.

Yet it was then-candidate Donald Trump who won the Buckeye State 51-43 percent, a difference of 446,841 votes.

Zawistowski says he and others weren't surprised, however, because they paid for their own polling of Buckeye voters, which predicted Trump would win by six to seven percent.

"He ended up winning by eight percent," the tea party activist points out. "No one else called that but us."

Post-primary polls have shown Rep. Renacci is three points behind Brown, and some polls show an even closer race, Zawistowski tells OneNewsNow.

The reason that three-percent gap is promising, he further explains, is that Renacci is trailing by three percent in early-voting results in northeast Ohio, a traditional "blue" voting block for a Democrat.

"And if Jim Renacci is only down by three percent by people who have actually voted in northeast Ohio, I've got news for you: he's winning the election," Zawistowski predicts.