Ohio not in contention for Democrats in 2024, says veteran elections analyst

Election analyst Kyle Kondik suggested that while some Republican policy may not be popular Ohio, its politicians ultimately remain more popular than their Democrat opponents.

Kondik, an Ohio native himself, is the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the Center for Politics at UVA’s nonpartisan newsletter on American campaigns and elections. He wrote a piece for Politico headlined, "No, Ohio Is Not in Play" suggesting that Ohio is no longer the bellwether detecting future presidents because it favors Republicans in the present climate. 

On one hand, while he noticed that Republicans' position on abortion may be unpopular, he suggested Democratic candidates remain more unpopular. He suggested this is part of a larger phenomenon in action where many states that were once carried by former President Barack Obama have shifted toward the GOP after the political "realignment" caused by former President Trump.

"Broadly speaking, the story of the Trump era in the Industrial North has been one of eroding Democratic presidential performance," Kondik wrote. "Relative to the nation, only Illinois and Minnesota were roughly as Democratic in 2020 as they were in 2012. All of the other states in the region that Barack Obama carried at least once (Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) have gotten more Republican."

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He went on to summarize, "The regional movement toward the GOP at the presidential level is the upside of the Trumpian realignment, as he has pulled more White voters who generally do not have a four-year college degree into the GOP coalition — a vital and large bloc in many of these states."

He also described the political shifts occurring in "collar counties," a term he used for any county adjacent to a major urban county. While some of these in the industrial north are being reclaimed by Democrats, he claimed many of these "collar counties" in Ohio are noticeably trending red.

While Kondik noted "there has been some pro-Democratic movement in the region’s collar counties — movement that was vital in Joe Biden’s efforts to reclaim some of these states in 2020," ultimately in Ohio, "it’s much harder to find examples of Democratic growth in these kinds of suburban/exurban collar counties." He went on to observe, "in the vast swaths of small town and rural Ohio, the Democrats have collapsed."

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He cited a report from the "liberal Center for American Progress comparing the 2012 election with 2016," and summarized that two major groups’ conservative leanings loomed large, "non-college whites in Ohio actually became slightly more Republican than they were nationally, while the state’s college Whites also remained more Republican than they were nationally."

He noted, "This combination — a Republican stampede among non-college Whites, paired with a college white group that retains a GOP lean — is electorally deadly for Democrats in Ohio, particularly because the state is whiter than the nation as a whole."

However, he suggested a "silver lining for Democrats" was their Issue 1 rebuke of Republican policy did "provide a template for what a future Democratic victory in Ohio might look like." 

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"Ohio is, rightly, going to remain a focus in 2023, with a looming vote coming on abortion rights in November," he concluded. "But regardless of what happens in that ballot measure, the Trump realignment ended — at least for now — the state’s defining role as a presidential bellwether."

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