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In the past, winning the presidential election in Ohio almost meant spending the next four years in the White House.
The Buckeye State has been the Bellweather State for 14 presidential election cycles over 60 years. In every four-year showdown, from Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory in 1964 to Donald Trump's come-from-behind victory in 2016, Ohio's choice has won the Electoral College.
This streak was the longest in any state. But even before that extraordinary campaign began, since the Civil War, Ohio had voted for the winner 21 times and he voted for the loser just four times.
Moreover, the margin of victory for the winner in Ohio has always been close to the national popular vote margin of victory, with an average difference of only about 1 percentage point over the past 10 presidential elections.
The Ohio law also worked if the national popular vote and Electoral College tallies produced different winners. In each case this century, in 2000 and 2016, a candidate who won the popular vote in Ohio lost the national popular vote but won in the Electoral College.
But something happened in 2020. That year, even though Ohio handed the majority of its votes to then-incumbent President Donald Trump, Trump still lost the national vote and the Electoral College to Joe Biden.
Even more noteworthy was Trump's margin of victory in Ohio in 2020. The state gave Trump an additional 8 points, about the same margin he had over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Given that Trump lost to Biden nationally by about 4.5 percentage points, the difference between Ohio and the rest of the nation for these candidates was an astonishing 12.5 percentage points.
At the time, Ohio's lead and results were overshadowed by dramatic events in other states that Biden managed to wrest from Trump, but which Trump and his partisans then contested.
But when the smoke cleared, Ohio State's results stood out. How did Mr. Trump manage to hold on and maintain a comfortable margin in a state that has long been a close election night?
Perhaps this long-standing flagship state, which has seen many close races in the past, has simply lost its electoral heart to Trump. Or perhaps the nation itself has changed so much that it no longer functions as a microcosm of the nation.
Either way, the 2024 rematch between the 2020 representative candidates is now officially underway, and there may be more to glean from what's happening in Ohio State.
The arrival of the new coronavirus
The 2020 presidential election cycle began with Trump enjoying a classic incumbency advantage over his opposition challengers. But then a powerful backlash occurred: the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a sharp economic downturn and historic divisive movements. Democrats solidified their vote for Biden after he won the South Carolina primary and several other big states on Super Tuesday in March and on the following Tuesday.
At the time, Ohio Democrats remembered that they had won the state twice with Barack Obama and twice with Bill Clinton. They liked the national polls that seemed to favor Biden through the fall of 2020, and thought they even had a chance to retake Ohio on their way to retaking the White House that year. ”
They were right about the national election, but it turns out they were right about Ohio. Mr. Biden was able to take back several states that Mr. Trump won in the Great Lakes region in 2016: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. On average, Mr. Trump's share of the popular vote in those three states fell by only about 1 percentage point, but it was enough to flip the Electoral College nationwide. The addition of two Sunbelt states, Arizona and Georgia, from Trump's 2016 column further expanded Biden's share of the electoral vote.
But the winds that shifted enough to sway those five states did not prevail against Ohio, destroying its long standing as the nation's leading political weather vane.
Were there forces at work that somehow caused Ohio to be skipped while changing other battleground states? Has the nation changed, or has the country changed?
Ohio or America?
Ohio has long been known to favor incumbent presidents seeking a new term. George W. Bush won there by 2 percentage points in 2004, thereby surviving the narrowest electoral vote margin ever for an incumbent reelected. If he had lost Ohio in either 2000 or 2004, he would not have had the electoral votes to win in either case.
Recently, Ohio has bucked national trends for several cycles, electing Republicans to all six statewide offices and holding Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.
But much of the Republican Party's new advantages in the state came during the Trump era. Mr. Trump's victory in 2020, and his victory in last week's Ohio primary, are only some proof of Mr. Trump's tenacious appeal in the state.
Even though he is not the incumbent, Trump has maintained a higher approval rating in Ohio than in the nation since leaving office, and the latest polls show him leading Biden by double digits in a rematch.
Additionally, political newcomer Bernie Moreno, a candidate for the Ohio Senate, easily won last week's primary over two other Republicans who are much better known within the Republican establishment. . Most observers attribute Moreno's landslide victory to President Trump's support. This was also a kind of continuation, as Trump's support was also key to the nomination and election of J.D. Vance to the state's other Senate seat in 2022.
How much is a playing card?
Trump's growing popularity in the region can also be seen in a larger context. Ohio's population growth has lagged behind the rest of the nation over the past half century. When Richard Nixon was elected in 1960, Ohio had 25 electoral votes, but this fall it will be down to just 17, a decrease of about one-third.
Due to relative population decline, the state's demographics tend to be older and whiter. And these categories typically tend to support Republican candidates. This change is important for Ohio, as the state has long been considered a microcosm of the nation as a whole. Statistically, it was “similar to that country” in terms of race, urban-rural disparity, and mix of industries and occupations.
This similarity has often been noted when observers refer to the state as the ultimate bellwether. And Ohio is home to many of the elements of America's national physique: farmland and industrial cities, university and factory towns, vast suburbs, and a swath of rural southeastern counties that resemble neighboring West Virginia in many ways. It may be argued that it encompasses many things.
There may be a glimpse of another shift in Ohio in the issue priorities of Ohio voters. Media interviews conducted before and after recent primaries revealed that Ohioans are concerned about inflation and other economic issues as voters are concentrated across the country. But many also focused on immigration, or as Republicans in Congress and the media often call it, the “border crisis.”
Although Ohio is far from the border in question, the issue has been nationalized and has had significant impact. And a poll by a group called Third Way showed that Democrats are at a 24-point disadvantage over Republicans on immigration and the border in 2022.
All of these factors make Ohio a symptom of the dire prognosis that some observers have for the current Democratic Party. Louis Teixeira, a demographer and academic who calls Substack's newsletter “Liberal Patriot,” has criticized the party's so-called shift to the left in recent decades, particularly on social issues.
He cited Gallup polling data showing the percentage of Democrats who identify as “liberal” has more than doubled since 1994, from 25% to 54%.
The rise of academic liberalism
Teixeira also noted that this shift has come as the party is becoming a stronghold of voters with at least a four-year college degree. In fact, a large-sample Pew Research Center poll covering the period since 1994 found that the share of such voters who described themselves as Democrats or said they were Democratic-leaning was lower in the 2020 election. Previously, it had increased from 42% to 57%. The same poll found that people in groups who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party fell from 50% to 37%.
The growing dominance of college graduates is changing the social attitudes of what was once a blue-collar party, with candidates aiming to win primaries more likely to be college students than rural or urban working-class voters. He began working in highly sought-after policy positions.
“It deeply affects the party's image at election time,” Teixeira said. He worked for many years at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and recently moved to the American Enterprise Institute as a senior fellow.
Even after Democrats performed better than expected in the 2022 midterm elections, and even after their policies were reversed. Roe vs. Wade On guaranteeing abortion rights, Teixeira warned that the party's forced shift to the left on cultural issues was harming the party.
in washington post In a January 2023 column, Teixeira wrote, “More voters now think Democrats have gone too far to the left than say Republicans have gone too far to the right.”
If true, it portends disaster not only for Ohio but for Biden and his party.
Teixeira's column says, “The cultural left…has succeeded in associating the party with views on crime, immigration, police, free speech, and, of course, race and gender that are far removed from the views of the median voter. ” he said.
He is best known for the influential book he co-authored with John B. Judith in 1992 ((emerging Democratic majority)he is currently co-authoring a sequel with Judith titled. Where have the Democrats gone?