So I decided to talk about Ohio, a state that has long been an electoral battleground that Republicans have never won the WH without and Democrats have not won the WH without since 1960.

It served to some as Obama's "firewall" in 2012 despite a hotly contested race by Romney and also was won by Obama fairly easily at the end in 2008 and decided the entire election in 2004 with Bush narrowly taking it over Kerry.

However, Trump won it by a landslide in 2016 and Richard Cordray's larger than expected loss as well as an arguable underperformance by Sherrod Brown in the Senate race(as well as the fact that Republicans won all of the other 4 statewide races) has led to the state...

being written off. It's important to also note that Ohio has always been a more culturally conservative(although fairly elastic) state in which the GOP has amassed more power in over the years helped along with gerrymandering and voter suppression among other things.

However, I am in the camp that we shouldn't turn our backs on Ohio entirely and that the "Ohio is gone" take is somewhat flawed after looking at the way 2016 and 2012 compare in the presidential just today.

In order to win Ohio, Democrats have relied on huge victories in Cuyahoga(Cleveland), Franklin(Columbus), Lucas(Toledo), and Summit(Akron)counties along with strong victories in Ashtabula, Trumbull, and Mahoning(Youngstown) counties.

Lorain County has also been a Democratic stronghold historically and has not voted Republican since 1984 while Hamilton County(Cincinnati) was long a GOP stronghold but has gotten bluer over time, having been won by Obama in 2008 and being blue ever since in presidential races.

Athens County(a tiny college town county in Southern Ohio) has been a solid Democratic county since 1988 while Erie County(Sandusky), Portage County(Kent), and Montgomery County(Dayton) were reliably blue counties since 1992 although all have been more purple.

I could go on here but basically Dems have relied largely on winning the urban areas in addition to dominating in blue collar counties in eastern OH(several of which had flipped red in 2012) and holding down margins in the rest of the state with a handful of counties as tossups.

If you look at Hillary's performance in 2016, you see that Northeastern Ohio trended away from her as she ended up losing Trumbull, Ashtabula, and Portage while also nearly losing Mahoning and Lorain.

Most devastating of all, there was a huge drop off in turnout in democratic turnout in Cuyahoga and Summit counties. Hillary only won the former by 214,060 votes while Obama won it by 256,581 votes and only won the latter by 22,230 while Obama won it by 42,037.

Take a look at Lucas County and the same thing happened: Hillary won it by 35,135 votes while Obama won it by 66,676 votes. That's a huge blow. Similar scenarios happened in some of the counties I mentioned and in Montgomery County as well.

Franklin County was an area where Hillary performed better than Obama but only by 4,862 votes(on the other hand Trump did worse than Romney did there by 16,656 votes).

Combined with the collapse in Democratic votes in rural/exurban areas and the surge for Trump in them, Hillary lost Ohio by a record amount for presidential elections in Ohio this century.

So why do I think that people aren't correct in their assessment of OH being gone? Because the movement in areas like Montgomery, Cuyahoga, Lucas, Summit and to a lesser extent Mahoning, Lorain, and Trumbull were not caused by Obama-Trump voters. Trump only barely outperformed..

Romney in Summit, Lucas, Lorain, Mahoning, and Trumbull(and he underperformed Romney in Montgomery and Cuyahoga albeit only barely) while Hillary underperformed Obama by much more than Trump outperformed Romney in these counties.

This indicates that an increase in third party voting and depressed Democratic turnout(along with Trump killing Hillary in rural/exurban Ohio) is why she did so badly. 2018 is a bit more complex but it's worth noting that state politics in Ohio have been more GOP leaning...

than presidential ones in the last twenty years or so and Cordray wasn't a very strong candidate running against a much stronger candidate with far more star power and Brown did better in 2018 than he did in 2012(the Kavanaugh hearings also probably helped boost GOP votes too).

The bottom line is that the numbers in Cuyahoga, Lucas, and Summit along with several others were so terrible for Democrats in 2016 that it's hard to say that Trump really swept the race so much as Hillary simply flopped in the race.

The state is elastic enough historically( several Democrats only barely lost there in 2010 after all which was a terrible year nationally for DEMS) as well as GOP leaning in state elections to have not been caught up in the blue wave in 2018.

With the DEMS energized and Biden being a stronger fit for the state than Hillary, it is not a solid Trump state. I think the race is too high stakes for Dems to invest resources in OH where other states are better targets but it is not a lost cause.

I think Trump's victory in the state currently will fall between 5 points to 1 point. Thoughts? @SenhorRaposa @JMilesColeman @decunningham2 @CautiousLefty @ishabad @kilometerbryman @electionwatchus @ElectionBabe @ReginaA1981 @The_Rose_Lady @ArshiaHomayoun2, anybody else lol.