Six Months After Ohio Lawmakers Rewrote the Marijuana Law Voters Passed, a Majority of Republicans Say They Should Not Have

COLUMBUS, Ohio — September 21, 2026. Ohio voters legalized recreational marijuana at the ballot box in November 2023. The legislature rewrote that law through Senate Bill 56, a referendum campaign to repeal the rewrite fell short of the signatures needed in March, and Senate Bill 56 took effect on March 20, 2026. Six months on, Ohio voters have not come around to it.

A statewide Pollfinity Research survey of 496 Ohio registered voters, fielded this week, asked whether the legislature should honor the marijuana law voters approved in 2023 or has the right to significantly change it. 70% said honor what voters approved. 19% said the legislature may change it, and 11% were unsure. Among registered Republicans the split was 53% to 33% in favor of honoring the vote.

Key Findings

Poll Graphics

Partisan Dynamics

Party is close to deterministic in both statewide races. Of 419 respondents choosing a major-party candidate in both head-to-heads, 410 voted a straight ticket. In the Governor head-to-head, 77% of registered Republicans back Ramaswamy and 95% of registered Democrats back Acton.

The marijuana question is the clearest exception to that pattern. It is the only question in this survey on which majorities of both parties take the same side of a live policy dispute: 53% of registered Republicans and 84% of registered Democrats say the legislature should honor the 2023 vote. Majorities of both parties also reject the political violence statement and decline to describe themselves as libertarians. On candidate favorability the two parties diverge sharply.

Regional Breakdown

Region is derived from the area code of the mobile number sampled. Because mobile area codes persist when a voter moves, this is a proxy rather than a measurement. 45 of 496 respondents carried a non-Ohio area code and are excluded here.

Support for honoring the 2023 marijuana vote is a majority position in every region of the state.

Why This Release Does Not Headline A Ballot Test

This survey included ballot tests for U.S. Senate, Governor and Secretary of State. Those results are published in full in the accompanying topline and crosstab documents, and they are not reported as findings here.

Pollfinity Research does not apply a fixed numerical cutoff for when a ballot test may lead a release. That judgment is made survey by survey, and the reasoning is disclosed on each release page. For this survey the reasoning is as follows. The sample's recalled 2024 presidential vote runs roughly 21 points more Democratic than Ohio's certified 2024 result, and the sign of the margin is reversed: the sample recalls voting for Harris over Trump while Ohio voted for Trump by 11 points. That is a difference of sample composition rather than of sampling error, which means it would not be resolved by interviewing more people. A statewide ballot estimate drawn from it would not be reliable, so Pollfinity is not reporting one. For reference, the corresponding recall gap on Pollfinity's June 2026 New York Governor survey was 7 points. Issue findings in this release are reported within party, recall and ideology subgroups, where sample composition does not drive the estimate.