Is Ohio still America’s political bellwether?
2016 presidential race damaged that opinion
Along with deciding the leader of the free world, control of Congress and other trivialities, the status of Ohio as the nation’s leading political bellwether also is on the ballot Tuesday.
However, the presidential candidates certainly are not treating the Buckeye State like their election depends on it. President Donald Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden and their running mates are hitting well over a dozen states in the closing days
“I think the Biden campaign sees other states as more important, and the Trump campaign has to assume a victory in Ohio because if they lose it, they have no chance anyway.” Kyle Kondik Ohio native who works for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics
of this surreal campaign, but Ohio apparently is getting but a sole visit.
The Biden campaign said Sunday afternoon the Democrat will visit Cleveland on Monday.
Before that late addition, it appeared that Trump’s rally in Circleville on Oct. 24 and Biden running mate Kamala Harris’ stops in Cleveland on the same day would stand as the last candidate visits of the 2020 presidential campaign.
“I think the Biden campaign sees other states as more important, and the Trump campaign has to assume a victory in Ohio because if they lose it, they have no chance anyway,” said Ohio native Kyle Kondik, now with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Most prognosticators agree with at least the latter part of Kondik’s assessment. If a blue tide sweeps Biden to victory in a state Trump won by 8 points in 2016, the president stands little chance of holding onto states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where his margin was much smaller.
Compilations of polls show that the contest in Ohio has remained the closest in the country during the past few weeks.
The website fivethirtyeight.com, which simulates the election 40,000 times to see who wins most often, found Trump prevailing in Ohio 52% of the time, Biden 48%. The New York Times shows Ohio as the only state where the margin (for Trump) is less than 1 percentage point.
A common refrain anytime polls are mentioned these days is how wrong they were in 2016 – which was true for many state polls. The Times estimates what the results would be if those polls were as wrong as they were in 2016 and 2012.
For Ohio, the former calculation would translate into a Trump win of 6 points – close to his margin four years ago. In a 2012 scenario, Biden would win by less than 1 point.
Both projections still have Biden winning nationally.
Ohio’s main competition for the title of top national bellwether is New Mexico, where Biden is virtually certain to win.
Thus, if Biden wins the presidency and carries New Mexico but loses Ohio, both Ohio and New Mexico will have had just three misses since the latter became a state in 1912, said Kondik, author of “The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President.”
In that book, written just before the 2016 election, Kondik cited three reasons for regarding Ohio as the nation’s leading bellwether:
• Ohio has the best record of any state in voting for the winning candidate. Since 1900, it has gone for the loser only twice: in 1944, when Republican Thomas E. Dewey’s running mate was Ohio Gov. (and future Sen.) John W. Bricker; and in 1960, when Richard M. Nixon edged John F. Kennedy.
• Ohio’s results most often reflect the national voting average. The state not only has backed the winner in every election since 1964, but the victor’s Ohio percentage also has never deviated by more than 2 percentage points from his national figure in that period.
• Ohio has provided the decisive electoral votes to the winning candidate more times – six in the past 30 elections – than any other state.
But the 2016 election severely damaged Ohio’s reputation as a national trendsetter. Trump took Ohio by 8 points and won the Electoral College despite Hillary Clinton prevailing in the national popular vote by 2 points.
Its standing as the ultimate purple state was further battered in the 2018 mid-term elections, when a blue wave flowed across many states but did not appear in Ohio, as the GOP kept its 12-4 margin in gerrymandered congressional districts and held off strong Democratic challenges for all statewide executive offices.
This year, the spotlight on the state most likely at the tipping point for either candidate to achieve the needed 270 electoral votes has shifted to Pennsylvania in the view of many analysts. That’s a big reason the candidates are focusing so much of their attention on Ohio’s neighbor.
Ohio also was being ruled out as a key decider because it had not changed demographically along with the rest of the country.
Across the U.S., 31% tell census-takers they are non-white. In Ohio, it’s 22%.
To put it another way, 81% identify as white alone in Ohio. For the entire nation, it’s 72%.
Ohioans also are a little less educated: A little more than 29% have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 33% nationwide.
Those in the Buckeye State are a touch older than Americans as a whole, but only by a year.
But as poll after poll has shown the Buckeye State competitive between Biden and Trump, assertions that Ohio has become a red state have faded. How did that happen? “Biden’s improvement in polling versus how Clinton performed is with white voters – both white voters with and without a four-year degree,” Kondik said.
“This has manifested itself in the whiter-than-average states of the Northeast and Midwest, where Biden seems to be restoring some of the Democratic strength in the region that Obama showed in 2008 and 2012. That could be enough to flip Ohio, although the state also seems very likely to vote markedly more Republican than the rest of the nation again.”
So why did Ohio deviate so far from the norm four years ago?
“In terms of the 2016 realignment, Trump got all the benefits in Ohio – huge margins in rural/small-town white areas – and not many of the downsides – some slippage in highly educated suburbs, but not much slippage in suburbs overall.
“I wonder if this time Trump’s huge rural backing will erode slightly, and his suburban support will really drop off – as many GOP operatives seem to fear. In other words, the second wave of the Trump realignment – the bad one for Republicans – might hit Ohio this time.”
Dispatch researcher Julie Fulton contributed to this story. drowland@dispatch.com @darreldrowland
Off-duty officer dressed as Stormtrooper stops suspected drunken driver
LAS VEGAS – The Nevada Highway Patrol said an off-duty state trooper wearing a “Star Wars” costume while returning home from a Halloween party prevented a suspected drunken driver from entering a Las Vegas freeway in the wrong direction.
The Highway Patrol said Trooper Britta Foesch was a designated sober driver and in her personal vehicle and wearing a Stormtrooper costume – but not the helmet – when she stopped the other vehicle and called dispatchers to get on-duty troopers to the scene early Saturday morning.
The Highway Patrol said the other vehicle’s driver was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, driving without a valid driver’s license and two traffic violations.
The Highway Patrol said in a statement that it doesn’t recommend that citizens take matters into their own hands. But it said Foesch “is a trained professional having been a state trooper for seven years and a NHP dispatcher before that.”
The statement said Foesch’s actions potentially saved lives.
Biggest Swiss hospital near saturation as virus cases multiply
GENEVA – Authorities in Geneva said Switzerland’s largest hospital complex is facing “imminent saturation” and is preparing to fly patients to other Swiss hospitals after a sixfold spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the last two weeks.
The Geneva canton, or region, said the University Hospitals of Geneva on Sunday counted 474 people hospitalized with coronavirus infections, including 56 in intensive care. That’s up from 78 hospitalizations and 13 people in the ICU in mid-october.
“These figures point to a severe worsening of the situation,” the canton said in a statement.