Voting jumps in Delaware County
Much of added turnout went for Biden
As Ohio set a turnout record in the 2020 election, no county saw a bigger jump than Delaware County.
The affluent, reliably red county that has been swallowed up by the sprawling Columbus metropolitan area added more than 18,000 voters in 2020, and that turnout jump from the 2016 presidential election could get even larger as outstanding absentee and provisional ballots are counted.
But unlike much of the rest of the state, which President Donald Trump easily seized for a second consecutive victory, a large portion of the added turnout benefited President-elect Joe Biden even though Trump cruised again in Delaware County.
Democrats and some political watchers think it could signal a future turn for the fast-growing county as it absorbs more influence from deep-blue Franklin County, just as some other traditionally red suburbs in central Ohio have shifted. But Republicans maintain that they still have a grip on a county that county GOP Chairman Steve Cuckler described as a “microcosm of Ohio.”
“At the end of the day, it’s a red county,” Cuckler said.
So far in 2020, Delaware County has counted about 125,000 ballots, up from a turnout of nearly 106,000 in 2016. It could add as many as 4,300 more this year as outstanding absentee and provisional ballots are added to the final tally.
That 18,000-vote increase mirrors the increase in voter registrations in the county. In 2016, Delaware County had about 80% voter turnout. This year, it’s at 82% based on unofficial results.
Delaware County hasn’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential race since 1916, according to Ohioelectionresults .com. But Delaware was one of only 15 counties where Biden’s performance compared with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 turnout and outpaced Trump’s own improvements.
Trump defeated Clinton in Delaware County by a 57,568 to 40,872 margin in 2016. In 2020, Trump has added almost 7,600 votes in Delaware County, but Biden has gained more than 16,000 over Clinton four years earlier.
Ohio State University political science Professor Paul Beck said that aligns with trends in Columbus suburbs, including Westerville and Upper Arlington, that have turned blue in recent years. Still, parts of Delaware
County remain rural, a part of the state where Beck said Clinton “left a lot of Democratic votes on the table.”
“There are many more Democrats (in Delaware County) than what people think,” said Peg Watkins, chair of the county Democratic Party. “There’s been this mentality that, ‘I’m the only Democrat in Delaware County.’ We’ve really worked against that.”
Watkins said Democrats worked to register more voters at community gatherings following protests against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and by going door to door campaigning in wards where voter registration traditionally has been lower. She wondered whether Biden could have performed even better in Delaware County if his campaign had targeted Ohio for visits from the candidates and their surrogates the way Trump’s campaign blanketed the Buckeye State in the weeks leading up to the election.
The COVID-19 pandemic that became the central issue of the 2020 campaign was perhaps a smaller issue for voters in Delaware County, Watkins said, pointing to white-collar office workers who could more easily work from home.
Many of those are in the southern part of the county, which acts more like a suburb of Columbus than the more rural northern half of the county, she said.
Cuckler pointed out that while Biden improved over Clinton in 2016, downballot Republicans still did well in Delaware County. State Rep. Kris Jordan won his reelection bid with 55% of the vote in Delaware County, and U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson carried Delaware County with 57%.
He acknowledged “some Franklin County influence,” but said the downballot races suggest that it will remain a red county. “It still in a lot of ways has that rural character, and it is increasingly becoming suburbanized,” said Nancy Miller, associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton.
As the county becomes more suburbanized, it sits on the dividing line between an urban area that becomes more reliable for Democrats in each election and the deep red rural areas, she said.
Columbus is one of the few areas of the state that are growing, she said, and that is pressing into counties like Delaware, where demographics are changing. If that continues, she said, Delaware County could still shift.
Delaware County had about 174,000 people in 2010, but the Delaware County Regional Planning Commission projects that will grow to nearly 219,000 in 2021. While Delaware County has been drawing population from around Ohio, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Franklin County was by far its largest feeder from 2014 to 2018.
“Only time is going to tell,” Miller said. “A lot of that will be an economic development story.” rrouan@dispatch.com @Rickrouan