Photo of a voting booth by WEWS.
Winning Ohio used to be crucial to winning the presidential election. This year, not so much.
Ohio used to be a key swing state in the presidential election for decades — meaning lots of political ads and campaign stops — but the tide shifted back in 2016, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“There was this educational realignment that Donald Trump supercharged in 2016 and it had the effect of changing a lot of states,” he said. “States like Ohio and Iowa went from being purple states to red states.”
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Fifty-one percent of Ohio voted for former President Trump in 2016, who went on to win the election despite losing the popular vote. Fifty-three percent of Ohio voted for Trump in 2020, but President Joe Biden won the election.
“I think we’ll look at 2016, historically speaking, as an important realigning election politically in lots of different places, but particularly Ohio because that’s when it went from being a state that was very reflective of the nation to one that wasn’t reflective of the nation anymore,” said Kondik, who wrote “The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President.” His book was published June 2016.
Trump is expected to win Ohio, which has 17 electoral votes, for the third time in a row in 2024. A recent Washington Post poll showed him leading by six points. Neither Harris or Trump have made campaign stops in Ohio recently. Trump was last in Ohio leading up to the state’s March primary to drum up support for U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who ended up securing the Republican nomination and is going up against Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in a pivotal race for control over that chamber.
“It’s not a state that seems to be particularly competitive (in this presidential election),” Kondik said.
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are the key battleground states in the election for Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump.
Ohio’s history as a swing state
Up until 2020, Ohio had voted for the overall winning presidential candidate in every election since 1964. No Republican has won the presidential election without winning Ohio. Former President Barack Obama was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Ohio in 2012.
“Trump has proven to be particularly popular among working class whites in northeastern Ohio, Cleveland, Akron area, as well as in Appalachia,” said Paul Beck, professor emeritus and academy professor of political science at Ohio State University.
Republican candidates across the board have had much success in Ohio.
“They’ve had more candidates who have statewide recognition or visibility,” Beck said. “Democrats have been hard pressed to find candidates who had that kind of visibility that could compete evenly or better with them in elections.”
It’s possible Ohio could be a swing state again in the future, but things would have to change.
“It’s always possible that the demographic patterns that we’ve seen recently could change in a way that maybe makes the state more competitive,” Kondik said. “I do think it would involve Democrats making up some ground with white working class voters which it’s been a struggle for them with that group, and they’ve been losing ground for a long time amongst that group. I also think that the Democrats just have to get much more out of the suburban counties than they do.”
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