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Buckeye State voters will head to the polls Tuesday to weigh in on a contentious ballot measure involving public sector unions that will test the strength of the state parties, big labor, the Republican governor and serve as a barometer heading into the 2012 elections.

Gov. John Kasich's law that limits collective bargaining for public sector unions appears headed for defeat on Tuesday, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Sunday. The collective bargaining measure will appear on the ballot as "Issue 2." Voters can check yes to keep the law, which limits bargaining rights and requires union workers to contribute 10 percent of their earnings towards their pensions, or no to repeal it. Earlier this year, Kasich signed the union restrictions into law after it passed in the Republican-controlled legislature. A repeal of the measure would deliver a substantial victory for the labor community and a sharp rebuke of Kasich.

Two recent polls forecast trouble ahead for Kasich. The PPP (D) survey shows that 59 percent of voters oppose the anti-union law and will move to repeal it, while 36 percent support it and will vote to keep it. But it's not just Democrats who want to throw out the law: 30 percent of Republicans are planning to buck their party and vote to overturn the governor's bill while 66 percent support it. The majority of independents (54 percent) plan on repealing the law while 39 percent will support it. A Quinnipiac survey taken at the end of October told a similar story: 57 percent want to repeal the law while 32 percent want to uphold it.

Perhaps adding insult to injury, 57 percent of voters surveyed by PPP disapprove Kasich while only 33 percent approve, placing him among the most unpopular governors in the country. Kasich won the job in the Republican wave of 2010, defeating Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland. But the poll suggests voters are feeling a bit of buyer's remorse: 55 percent said if they were able to vote over again, they would choose Strickland instead while 37 percent would remain with Kasich. The Quinnipiac survey also found Kasich's approval rating underwater by a similar margin: 52 percent gave him a poor job performance grade while 36 percent said he is doing a fine job.

The Democratic and Republican state parties, two organizations tasked with educating voters about the issues, and outside groups have been avidly getting the word out on the union measure. The results of Tuesday's election will test those efforts, but it will also have repercussions for candidates running in 2012, especially for Republicans if the law is repealed. But, of course, polls can only say so much. For one thing, voter turnout is typically low in off-year election. Also, as a labor official told RCP last month, the question may be framed differently in polls than on the actual ballot and voters may be unsure about what exactly a "yes" vote means. For this poll, however, PPP said it used the same language as will be on the ballot.

Meanwhile, voters appear poised to reject one facet of the federal health care law through another measure on the ballot. The health care initiative is called "Issue 3" on the ballot, and would amend Ohio's constitution to block the federal government from requiring residents to carry health insurance. (A yes vote would reject the health care requirement and a no vote would uphold it.)

The measure is largely symbolic, as the courts are still weighing whether the federal government can mandate that each person carry health insurance and federal law trumps state law. But if it voters in this battleground state reject the law on Tuesday (and in doing so, they would also prohibit Ohio from implementing its own state-run health care system, like the one in Massachusetts), it will likely be seen as a rebuke of the president's signature legislative accomplishment.

The PPP poll shows 49 percent of voters plan to vote to reject the law while 35 percent plan to uphold it. But the margin has tightened by 17 points from three weeks ago, when the poll found a majority of voters planned to vote "yes" and reject the law. Notably, 16 percent remained undecided about how they will vote.

Regardless of Tuesday's outcomes, the fact that these two issues made their way onto the ballot (which required hundreds of thousands of signatures) for a straight up or down vote shows the strength of the grass-roots operation in this critical swing state.

PPP surveyed 1,022 likely voters from Nov. 4-6. The sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Quinnipiac surveyed 1,668 registered voters from Oct. 17-23. The margin of error for that poll is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.