By Tom Angell
A new poll finds that majorities of voters in three key presidential swing states support legalizing marijuana. The survey from Quinnipiac University, released on Wednesday, also shows that ending cannabis prohibition is more popular with voters than any of the presidential candidates are.
Legalization is supported by 56 percent in Florida, 52 percent in Ohio and 57 percent in Pennsylvania.
Comparing the marijuana results with a separate Tuesday release of data from the same survey detailing voters’ views of the presidential candidates shows that cannabis law reform enjoys much higher approval ratings than the Democratic and Republican contenders do.
| FLORIDA | OHIO | PENNSYLVANIA | |
| Legalizing Marijuana | 56% | 52% | 57% |
| Medical Marijuana | 80% | 90% | not asked |
| Hillary Clinton | 37% | 34% | 37% |
| Donald Trump | 37% | 36% | 39% |
| Bernie Sanders | 43% | 45% | 50% |
Support for legalizing marijuana is particularly high among Democrats and independents in all three states.
| FLORIDA | OHIO | PENNSYLVANIA | |
| Democrats | 63% | 67% | 67% |
| Independents | 65% | 57% | 61% |
| Republicans | 40% | 30% | 41% |
Medical marijuana is even more popular, sometimes getting more than twice as much support from voters as the candidates do.
In Ohio, 90 percent of voters support letting patients use medical cannabis with support from their doctors. In Florida, 80 percent of voters said they would back legalizing medical marijuana.
Those results bode well for a medical cannabis amendment that has already qualified for Florida’s November ballot and a similar measure that activists are collecting signatures for in Ohio. (Quinnipiac did not ask about the issue in Pennsylvania, where the legislature and governor recently enacted a law making the state the 24th in the U.S. with a comprehensive medical cannabis program.)
In the survey, the cannabis reform proposals were also more popular than currently serving elected officials, including all six U.S. senators from the three states. Among governors, only Ohio’s John Kasich outperformed marijuana legalization in the survey, though he isn’t as popular as medical cannabis.
Legalization and medical cannabis is more popular with voters than Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, which received less than 50 percent support in all three states. The marijuana law reform concepts also outpolled President Obama’s job performance and his nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court.
All three of the remaining presidential candidates have pledged to allow states to implement their own marijuana laws without federal interference, but only Sanders has voiced personal support for the policy of legalizing cannabis.
To see what the presidential contenders have said about cannabis laws, read Marijuana.com’s comprehensive guide to the candidates.
