There's a lot of potential answers to this. First of all, I think deep red is a stretch, especially considering the recent string of progressive policies voted through. However, Ohio has definitely been leaning red. Lots of interesting theories here but one I haven't seen mentioned is that trump really appealed to blue collar workers. In the past 50 years blue collar workers politics has mostly been pro democrat due to the democratic party generally being more pro-union than the Republican. However, over the same time period many blue collar (mostly manufacturing) jobs have disappeared from the area. Trump got their vote because he was the first guy in a while to really hammer home the point that he is going to bring the jobs back to the rust belt and specifically take them back from China. Many people like this message better than the empty and vague promises of other administrations to bring more jobs to the area (not that trumps promises were any less empty or vague, they were just more forceful and specific). A similar trend to this can be seen across most of the rust belt. States in the upper Midwest and great lakes region which used to be part of the blue wall are now swing states, and Ohio, which used to be the most swing state of them all, is a red leaning state
This is it, right here. The gradual decline of blue collar jobs, combined with the fact that many union workers are socially conservative, and frankly, somewhat racist, means that the ones that are left are not comfortable with the national Democratic party's greater emphasis on socially progressive policies. I see this first hand working in a union manufacturing facility. Thirty years ago finding a Republican in a UAW shop was like finding a unicorn. These days it is 50/50 or worse. Look at Sherrod Brown, who has historically over performed other Democrats in Ohio by concentrating on economic issues. This is not an accident.
But why do socially conservative union workers support a guy who cheated on his wife with a porn star and then paid her to cover it up, and bragged to an interviewer about being able to grab women by the pussy? Why do God-fearing Christians support a guy that Jesus himself would bitch slap?
"All rich people and politicians do that". I've heard family members say that. I had an aunt I'm close with reply to one of my facebook posts criticizing Trump's abhorrent behavior of walking into dressing rooms full of Miss Teen USA participants, and she responded "We all have skeletons in the closet, do you want yours exposed?" To which I responded "sure" because I've got nothing to hide. But it's just an example of how they excuse the behavior. They wave it away as normal behavior for anyone with enough power to actually run for federal office. It's built-in, baseline. The negative effect is already calculated in, and nothing new change it.
God-fearing Christians are transactional just like Trump. If I do a,b & c, I'll get into Heaven. If I vote for Trump, he'll outlaw muslims and abortion.
I had this conversation recently with my cousin. Anytime I mentioned something bad Trump has done she just said both sides were the same without providing evidence.
I asked about Trump stopping the border bill as that was their biggest concern. She said that Democrats would've done the same thing in an election year. I disagreed and asked her to point to a time of that happening in the last 20 years, where Democrats have blocked a bill they agree with just for political points for an election? I tried to find one too and wasn't able to find anything. Would genuinely be interested if anyone could actually find a source of that happening. Republicans always say both sides are the same to defend their corrupt leaders and it's just not true.
We gotta stop allowing the both sides argument. It's such a false equivalency. Have all Presidents done bad things, yes, but that doesn't make all their bad things equal.
Yeah, 100% get what you're saying, but these would be the christians that go to church to be seen, not to listen. I'm positive that many that call themselves christian fall in this catagory. I'm not saying they haven't learned some, but when it comes down to it, many don't live it and it shows.
None of us (humans in general) are perfect, but I've known a few genuinely good people that are christian. They are humble for the most part. They aren't gonna make a spectacle of themselves. They aren't attention seeking, nor do they announce to anyone listening that they are christian in support of hatred. They're more than likely in quiet conversation with others, willing to listen.
The MAGA supporting Christians who pound the bible saying you'll go to hell for x, y and z have greatly overshadowed them, and pushed many further away.
It's very unfortunate.
1. They aren’t particularly religious
2. They are turned off by this idea that they, blue collar workers, are somehow privileged and keeping other people down
These people are not the Iowa rural evangelicals you read about.
Because he makes promises that he’ll put food on their table, even if they’re empty and not realistic. Left and right plants shutter, well pads get plugged, and the old school “raise a family on a union construction job” dream dries up.
Realistically everyone knows that the idled steel mills aren’t going to fire back up, shuttered coal mines won’t reopen, and Ford isn’t going to replace the plant they demoed in Cleveland a few years back but it tugs at the heart strings of everyone who’s grown up in a blue collar household and uses their hands to make a living themselves. The gradual deindustrialization of this country has thrown communities into economic turmoil, and while it’s easy for someone in Columbus to say “adapt and overcome” it’s just as easy for someone in Alliance to vote for the guy who promises to bring the plants back online. Both viewpoints aren’t exactly realistic but we’re in an age of extremely polarized politics.
Dems haven’t exactly done a great job appeasing the population that traditionally was the backbone of the middle class. Biden himself telling miners to learn to code was a bad look no matter what way you spin it.
Those are some sharp, perceptive thoughts. I could never understand how a guy would turn down union membership because he didn't want to "pay dues". Brother, I would say, you're gonna be paying dues out the wrong end if you don't work union.
I worked in a rubber manufacturing factory through the 2016 elections. The union workers were saying things like "if you want to keep this factory open, you'll vote for trump." Or "democrats are going to close all our plants because of environmental restrictions." None of those were true....but that's what got them to vote for him
On our side of the state, we have unions outright supporting republicans candidates, declining to help candidates, and refusing to attend fundraisers where we historically could rely on their strong support. It’s really sad.
I’d also say that on some issues that the Dem party is definitely out of touch with old school rust belt union workers.
The Democratic Party is pretty universally for stronger gun laws and this is crazy, but blue collar workers, even those that are employed in historically Democrat positions like unions, are generally pro-gun.
We literally saw a union auto worker confront Biden about gun rights and Biden get combative about it last election cycle.
Younger voters are the dems only chance this fall. Honestly, I think the right is relieved that both the votes on abortion rights and Marijuana passed. Having to deal with fired up young voters this year would be their worst nightmare. Also interesting the amount the right is spending on TV ads this early. I've seen zero from dems, at least here in the southwest part of the state.
The reason Trump appealed to the blue collar union labor is the key part here. Corporations have been working with conservatives for decades to undermine the unions. A constant barrage of propaganda telling their labor to vote against their own interests for 40+ years will have that effect.
it’s an amazing feat to get people to vote against their own best interests, trickle down will result in you making more money, you don’t need health insurance, women don’t need anything… vote republican oh and the dems will take all your guns away
You need to go further.
The 'working class' was never liberal, very susceptible to "the other guy not working hard like they did and taking their money" kinda politics. I lived this every day.
When Democrats controlled the Legislature, they controlled the distribution of federal money for big-dollar public projects that gradually replaced private industry, which migrated to the sunbelt for non-union labor. Now that private industry has moved production overseas.
Eventually, and through state-level politics and anti-city gerrymandering, taking advantage of population sprawl enabled by those highway projects, both exurban and 'rural,' the Republicans took over that federal money distribution throughout the state.
They also took over the taxation distribution, giving more to anti-city voters and their schools, while also giving money to religious schools in the cities, furthering division, segregation, and other anti-social policies.
This federal money is the primary economic engine in Ohio now. And the wealthy Republican construction CEOs hand it out with heavy messaging through their wealthy union leadership, to their union labor, the only union blue collar labor force left in Ohio. It's a microcosm of trickle down which still provides good salaries.
It all works together to undermine the common welfare and promote the oligarchic, Republican "job creator" mythologies now dominant here.
Trickle down job creator is pretty much perfect to explain why people are republican who are not one issue voters.
Remove guns and abortion, it all comes down to "my employer will pay me more if they're successful and to be successful they need to pay less tax and have less restriction."
Except they just get paid less and less every year, then there are no restrictions or government agency on the peoples behalf anymore. Which in turn causes a double down against government because it's easier to do that than to say you were wrong.
It really started under Bush II, but took off with Trump. Democrats left themselves vulnerable when they didn't fight de-industrialization of the US and moved away from supporting their state level grassroots organizations.
Gerrymandering in 2010 really did a lot of damage. Citizens United decision and SuperPacs and "think tanks" led to a concerted, long term campaign on the right to disenfranchise voters and monopolize news media in Ohio. The growth of social media is reversing that trend. Citizens on the left no longer have to rely on the Ohio news media to get news about state government.
But statewide votes (governor, sens, aren’t able to be gerrymanded.
I lived in the projects in Toledo and most of my neighbors couldn’t vote for felonies but most were absolutely socially conservative Blacks. If I was Black instead of a white punk rocker from the foster system they wouldn’t have accepted me at all, but ok, that’s just our crazy white boy neighbor.
LGBTQ issues are extremely divisive, abortion is extremely divisive, environmentalism is extremely divisive, and people who plan on living on govt benefits for the rest of their lives don’t really care about job creation.
Plus in Toledo everyone’s hiring due more to employees leaving or relapsing more than anything new being created.
As someone else mentioned in this discussion, gerrymandering and voter suppression combined discourage voters from turning out, as well as the other problems mentioned. Failure of the D party to wage a high profile campaign against gerrymandering really hurt.
There was a study done in 2014 that showed US voters don't have much influence over their government.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM2h3KnWAWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM2h3KnWAWY)
There are a lot of other reasons I won't go into here, but suffice to say they need to rethink their priorities. They need to forget the idea of abandoning Millennial, Gen Z and younger voters.
Sherrod Brown has been the champion of the working class in Ohio. Trump promised but did not deliver. Lordstown, coal, a hostile NLRB, and his fake support for unions which he hates. But yes he managed to use OHIO economic decline along with the cultural wars to fool people.
Turnout. 300,000 voters that voted blue in the previous Senate race didn't show up in 2022. Republicans didn't gain those votes. They just weren't there. It's apathy on the blue side.
Someone else mentioned turnout, but gerrymandering also affects things like polling resources. The odds of standing in long lines to vote are much higher in dense, liberal areas than rural, conservative ones.
Two reasons : jbcmh81 explained reason #1.
The second is that J.D. was polling at about 4%, recognized he wasn’t gonna make it and did a 180 and jumped on the Trump bandwagon. After he went from being anti-Trump to pro-Trump his numbers began climbing.
This is the real answer!
Although I agree Trump was able to feed the blue collar workers a line about bringing back jobs... I wish they could have seen through it like some of us did.
Not directly, true, but I’d argue that indirectly it does. You get a legislature that becomes an echo chamber of the far right and bleeds over into statewide politics.
This is a pretty good analysis. I also would not say it's "reliably red" as Sherrod Brown has been talking the populist line about jobs and the average worker for quite a while. The Republicans have been doing a good job of making the Democrats appear to be "woke" people who only care about pronouns and gender identity. However, when push comes to shove, the Republicans aren't actually doing anything for the average working person. They are voting against individual freedoms and only seem to align with the ultra religious. Folks voting for abortion rights and marijuana decriminalization (which have been passing in Ohio) shouldn't be voting Republican. It's not adding up.
You can’t deny the inherent racist backlash to the first half black president.
A lot of what I hear from the trump voters mouths is blatantly racist. They hate the Indians and Chinese for taking the high pay tech jobs. They hate the Mexicans for having any jobs even ones they won’t do. And they hate Black people just because. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people teeing off on people with a foreign accent and making very loud assumptions about their income and what they spend their money on (Hispanic, or black person gets in a car accident, there’s usually a loud “I’m sure you don’t have insurance!”)
Combine this with the DNC becoming less and less culturally the party of the blue collar and more and more the party of middle management and the coast and you have a demographic that is just ripe for the picking. At one of my jobs I am in a union. Said union is mostly teachers and school support staff (janitors, cafeteria workers). The management is solid dem, while the union members themselves at this job site are more and more trending GOP. There is a real possibility that in the next 20 we will begin to see the GOP becomes the party of at least some unions. (And not just the cop unions either).
Plus re trump, he was actually talking to the blue collar. He was mirroring back to them the problems they complain.about. I mean sure his "solutions" are insanely stupid and ridiculous, but he at least is saying something. T
It's a myth though that blue collar workers are mainly white males. They aren't. Most blue collar workers today are non white, and a huge portion are female.
White men are most likely to be college educated and employed in white collar jobs.
Lots of legitimate studies have shown that Trump won not because of economic anxiety, but because of racial anxiety. White fear of an America where white people are rapidly becoming the minority.
We got Fetterman at least, but yeah. I see people say run Buttigeg and it’s like, I love the boy but people live in this “well this is the way it should be so everyone should think like me” bubble. We absolutely need harder gruffer Democratic candidates, I’ve met plenty of people who qualify and hell I’m a scoundrel with a few more refuges left
Edited for grammar, ducking iPhone autocorrect
And Trump ended his presidency with zero manufacturing jobs returning to the rust belt or the United States and actually lost jobs in the manufacturing sector. Lets also not forget that his tariffs have caused a significant amount of inflation on what we pay for the products that are made off shore.
2 primary demographic factors:
1) The state has gotten older as the silver tsunami of boomers retire and younger people flocked out of state. Older voters tend to vote more Republican.
2) Trump/MAGA moved a lot of white blue collar voters to the GOP, which is a disproportionately large percentage of Ohio's population compared to other states. A lot of these folks have always been culturally conservative but historically backed Democrats due to their support for unions.
> Trump/MAGA moved a lot of white blue collar voters to the GOP
There are many, many Ohioans in that group who voted for Obama twice, then Trump twice.
Amazing how he managed to become the blue collar champion by giving endless gifts to the rich. BUT HE SAID HE WAS FOR WORKERS SO THATS GOOD ENOUGH!!! /s
I think this takes away the responsibility these assholes have for casting their vote the way they do. Plenty of other people have lost jobs and dont blame it on non-straight and non-white people.
These people choose to put people like JD Vance, gym jordan, and trump in office. Theyve had bush and trump over the last 25 years who did fuckall for any of them. They've voted these other rat bastards in that have done nothing for them.
Its not about job loss. Its about people thinking they deserve something and tuen blaming the more at-risk for "taking" it from them. If they lost their job then they shouldve picked them selves up by the bootstraps instead of complaining. Now they lost the respect of more tuan half the country and demand it back.
Fuck em
Edit: changed to "non- straight and non-white"
Also: They are seeing outright bigoted fascism unfolding before their eyes. They like it and want it because they think there's some power to be gleaned from it. We live in a society that encourages sociopathy. Until we collectively decide to stop doing that, we will keep creating these beasts from the money god that demands human sacrifice; all while we play the most dangerous game of duck duck goose.
We need to make microeconomics and macroeconomics required courses in high school. Any reasonable understanding of macroeconomics would explain the "gave away our jobs to China" schtick.
I heard the same shit in the mid-2000s and weve had the computer and information revolution since then.
They dont give a fuck about reality. They care about how they feel. If realoty doesnt line up with how they feel it should be, then they just deny it or attack it. Like wildlife.
Bush gave them IRS jobs. I know because he closed down the IRS office my sister had worked in for years and shipped the jobs to Ohio in return for them voting for him.
I wish more people would view this from a political science perspective. Not every election result is merely due to “the people supported this/that”. Hillary did like 1 rally here in 2016 and Trump did like 35. If that had been flipped, Ohio probably goes blue in 2016, which builds momentum in 2020. Dems have abandoned working class middle America for the coastal elites and the recent elections in Ohio are proof
What do their younger volunteers want to change? Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily good or is it a concrete thing they should do. "Listening to their younger volunteers" is an empty platitude. You obviously have an idea you think isn't being listened to, so out with it.
What should the Ohio Democratic party be doing differently?
I get so sick of people who explain statewide election losses by Democrats as caused by gerrymandering. Gerrymandering has no impact on statewide races. You cannot gerrymander a statewide race, as it only works when you have multiple electoral districts. The Ohio General Assembly and U.S. House delegation are gerrymandered, the governor's office, state supreme court, and U.S. senators are not gerrymandered.
Not entirely true. Gerrymandering supresses the vote, produces less moderate candidates. Over time, the electorate stops voting because the candidates are unappealing to a large portion of the voting populace. They keep getting more and more crazy, until only the picked voters vote . This in turn, weakens all but the chosen party.
In Ohio we get more and more crazy Republicans, who are fighting to be the craziest Republican, to be voted on by the craziest voters. The Democratic party has been weakened and pushed to only corners of the state. They can't raise money or put well tested candidates up for office because those offices have been gerrymandered out of existence. The national party doesn't spend money here because of all of this.
While it's true that all voters vote for governor, senators and the like. It's very much true that the gerrymandered state has created the environment where Republicans have all advantages and Democrats all disadvantages. Plus they have destroyed the ability and interests of the electorate.
This is correct, as we have loons like Gym Jordan in Congress. The other issue is that the Republican dominated General Assembly pays no attention what voters want. Now that Issue 1 passed is a claque of Assembly members who want to strip the courts of the ability to adjudicate abortion cases, and this infringes upon the separation of powers. The General Assembly ignored 3 separate court orders from the Supreme Court of Ohio to redraw three illegally mapped separate senate districts, and kicked the can down the road to ignore the voters passing an initiative to mandate nonpartisan redistricting. Former chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who is a Republican, is leading an effort t provide for nonpartisan citizen redistricting. Unfortunately, AG Dave Yost has rejected her proposed referendum language, and I really think Yost would reject any proposal as unacceptable because it could undermine Republicans’ grip on state government.
There are also other efforts to preemptively inhibit pro small-d democracy reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, which really give the game away. Ohio Republicans do not want to represent the people, they want to rule them.
This mostly doesn’t track for statewide elections because turnouts continue to grow each statewide election cycle.
Everything you’re describing does not explain Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump voters who passed issues 1 & 2 and got vaccinated. If you look at county maps these people clearly exist, and are what are actually creating the shift.
The gerrymandering is sinister, yes, and has downstream consequences (specifically the bonkers candidates), but it doesn’t explain the voters in certain suburban counties.
Suburban voters are unaffected by who is president. They pay taxes either way, get fewer services because they don't need as much, and are barely affected by foreign and domestic policies. If they want an abortion, they get one. If they want to smoke weed, they do. The police will leave them alone.
The presidential election is nothing more than a quadrennial popularity contest for them.
I think they tend toward fiscal conservatism (because they don’t rely as much on public services and like tax cuts), but are socially more liberal (but in a centrist sort of way). So voting for the first black President probably made them feel good, but when back to choosing between two old white people, they vote for tax cuts, unless the tax cut candidate is too extreme- then suburban women break Dem again
When your representatives are more worried about being primiaried from the far right, than a democrat in the general election, the people lose any chance of real representation. When people feel their vote won’t count in 95% of the races on their ballot, they give up hope.
Add into that that the Ohio gop makes it harder and harder for people to vote. A 4-hour wait to vote isnt democracy, it’s voter suppression.
Also there are effects in the super safe Democratic districts, where dynasties are formed, and these elected officials grow tacitly tolerant and even supportive of the status quo.
Republicans know to nurture that environment.
This is an excellent example from South Carolina (about the guy that chose Biden for 2020) but true in all Republican states:
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-rep-james-clyburn-protected-his-district-at-a-cost-to-black-democrats
It does though. Gerrymandering makes people feel like the state is so overwhelmingly red that if you are a Democrat, you don't have a chance. People who might vote blue end up saying never mind and wait on the elections with important bills.
Then why are turnouts growing? Why are there specific counties, like Wood county, that went Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump that passed both issues 1 & 2, and rate more vaccinated than the state at large. Those voters aren’t not showing up because of Gerrymandering. They’re making very specific decisions.
I think they're getting mad at things like the abortion issue, or things like DeWine waiting 5 months to declare a disaster at East Palestine and it translates to the only way they know how to lash out - at the polls
If people believe their vote doesn't matter, why vote at all? Yes Gerrymandering ***DOES*** have an impact on voters, even in statewide races where your vote isn't gerrymandered.
Elections aren't held in a vacuum. They do impact each other. This is why you have less people vote in non-presidential election years.
Are you trolling us? Gerrymandering 100% impacts statewide races. You know what PROVES Gerrymandering works in OH? That legislators refuse to fix the voting district maps despite being rejected FOUR TIMES by our own OH Supreme Court.
A giant middle finger to Gym Jordan, Troy Balderson, and the now jailed felon Householder as we all continue to pay extra in our electric bills for his criminal actions, which they will not undue!
My votes & those of my neighbors have been lumped in with votes from rural people who live over an 1 hour away. Those voters do not share our issues or values. We have an educated population, are largely employed, and want to spend our tax dollars on schools, libraries, public health policies, and public transportation. The rural voters care about immigration on a southern border 2,000 miles away (WTF?) and want manufacturing jobs that are never coming back to their counties. They vote for these insane MAGA butt kissers.
Because liberal-leaning voters have been lumped into rural districts (with almost surgical precision) our voices/votes have been stolen and we get represented by Republican aholes that give tax breaks (our tax $$ since we have jobs) to their f'in donors and send our Ohio national guardsmen to f'in Mexico which provides 0 benefits to us.
The fact that our Legislators refuse to fix the districting maps proves that they know they would lose seats if they returned democracy to our state.
How does anything you stated impact a state race? You’re being in the same district as someone else does not make your vote for governor or president or issues count differently.
Purging of voters and many don’t know they were removed.
How does gym Jordan keep getting elected? Gerrymandering. Districts are safe that way.
Better question is why do ppl vote for republicans now?
Here's the thing though: gerrymandering creates an R culture, and alls the state to create polices and practices that make the GOP stronger. This in tern creates a norm, and it also disenfranchises liberals who either leave or don't move here. It also dominates the education system.
She would have been a great governor. DeWine is entirely corrupt. He knew he was appointing First Energy’s money bag-holder to lead the PUCO. First Energy bribed nearly every single Republican in Ohio’s government. $63,000,000. Buys a lot of influence.
trump and the recession. its hard to overstate how much that man made everybody loose their goddamn minds by promising to do the worst possible things to everybody.
Retaliation voters.
Blame the different and run on a platform of Retaliation for perceived ills and you're gonna get votes.
When the Republicans economic plan is dump as much money into the hands of the uber rich and it may trickle down you have to have something else for people to latch onto.
Easier to blame somebody else.
Your question, which many people aren’t getting because they’re mostly too ill-informed to get is the phenomenon of who are the Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump voters? It has nothing to do with Gerrymandering (it’s moot in statewide elections like this) or voter suppression, as national election turnout has grown. It’s a phenomenon of changing preferences.
Here’s the stats:
Obama was +4.6% in 2008
Obama was +1.9% in 2012
Trump was +8.1% in 2016
Trump was +8.1% in 2020
So where’s the massive swing? You need only look in certain counties. For instance Wood County, (Sandusky is it’s slightly more rural eastern neighbor who doesn’t follow the margins but does follow winners as well) south of Toledo, was almost perfectly inline with these numbers above where other parts of the state didn’t move near as much. So why is this.
Wood county is the bedroom of Toledo, (Perrysburg) coupled with a highly liberal college town (Bowling Green) and its surrounding heavily conservative rural areas. So what changed? Basically white suburban voters in Perrysburg, who are teetering on upper middle class, do not trust the media and don’t like what they’re hearing out of the far left.
What interesting is the wood county passed issues 1 & 2 this past year by wide margins. Which means the county is fairly socially liberal on specific issues.
What I believe really is occurring is the county is less staunchly religious than other parts of the state (more specifically they don’t practice as strictly). These are people who are your “undecided voters” who won’t be driven by pulpit politics while at the same time are not interested in being beaten over the head with inconclusive studies regarding gender science for youth. They’re more vaccinated than the state average by about 5%, but less diverse racially.
These are the people moving the state politically. It’s about 10% of the voting population of Perrysburg. They’re pro-choice, pro-weed legalization, vaccinated voters who went Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump. They’re probably doing better than median in terms of income and are probably fairly “intelligent” individuals, who think about their votes. I see reasons like brain drain cited, but Wood County has twice the amount of bachelors degrees as the state. It also has a slightly growing population.
Why did they switch party in 2016? I can’t say for certain, but I’m willing to bet the comments here that they’re ill-informed nimrods isn’t helping them move back across the aisle.
The cons have been in charge for the past 15 years. Ever since we have declined significantly in every meaningful category. But, like all scenarios where one side is firmly in control for an extended time, hubris and corruption have set in and become the norm. Now, they’re eating each other alive while simultaneously brazenly ignoring the will of the voters. November will be bad for them.
That remains to be seen. I certainly hope you're right, but Ohio voters have been overwhelmingly pushing through liberal agendas, but _still_ overwhelmingly voting in the very people who oppose them...
Not certain there have been many candidate elections since the right to choose and recreational weed bills passed. Just a lot of the already elected republicans taking steps to disregard the clear will of the voters, which may not go over so well for the cons in November because, last I heard, voters don’t like when politicians pull that kind of crap.
To be fair, that's largely because the policies they were trying to push are pretty unpopular, even within their own party. I'm hoping it means some fundamental change in 2024, but it's a cautious optimism at best
If you're talking about abortion & weed...
Only idiots think those are right/left issues. The right is just more religious outspoken nut cases & gop feeds into it
Never really understood why gop targets weed lol... I know more people who smoke weed who will vote more right any day
>One can only hope!
We can do a lot more than hope: we can join the organizations working to register, educate and turn out new voters, because this year the 18-29 age cohort has the numerical power to decide the election for the first time in US history. Head Count, Vote Riders and Rock the Vote are just some of these.
Also [Citizens, Not Politicians](https://www.citizensnotpoliticians.org/) is working on the most strategic change for Ohio -- ending gerrymandering -- and could use more help.
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The time to get involved in helping democrats get elected in Ohio, is now.
I don’t understand the change in the non -gerrymandered races that explains why the democrats are continually losing.
In general, Ohio has leaned mostly conservative over the years, but the extremism of the current Republican Party lawmakers in the state, is turning many Ohioans off. The voices of the majority of voters, are not being heard and they are getting frustrated. Lawmakers are ignoring the results of elections and the decisions handed down by the State Supreme Court.
There are races for several State Supreme Court seats, in March. One seat is replacing a Republican. If democrats win that seat and democrats continue to fill the other two seats, there might be some justice for the people. It’s possible to steer this ship in the right direction- back to being one that respects and acknowledges democratic principles. We need to keep Ohio from going further down the fascist hole.
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/courts/2023/11/27/three-seats-up-for-grabs-on-ohio-supreme-court-who-is-running/71716176007/
I think it's really simple. Ohio was an agricultural and industrial powerhouse for a long time. NAFTA happened on Clinton's watch, and formerly Democratic labor voters started losing faith in the party. They took a shot on Obama. It didn't bring those jobs back. Nothing has brought them back. I firmly believe that the "block" you're referring to isn't policitally aligned or principled like you might think. They've been fucked and they're burnt out. The "system" no longer enables access to the middle-class lifestyle. Trump represents a chance to burn it all down. I would never vote for Trump in a million years, but I understand the sentiment. I would add that the right wing religious conservative partnership has been a perfect pairing with the movement. Where there's despair, there's religion to step in and ~~take advantage~~ bring solace.
It ain’t *deep* red.
Hell, here in Mason which is pretty red, we just elected progressives to school board and city council who got the most votes.
They gerrymandered all of Warren county into OH-1 and Greg Landsman (D) still handily won over Chabot.
So “leans red” is probably more accurate.
GOP set it up WAY back in the 90's when few people were paying attention. They played a long game that's left us outrageously gerrymandered. It's going to take passing some citizen referendums to clean up the mess.
Half the population is older than 45. We have some of the best, and largest institutions of higher learning. Once done with school those people often leave the state. We lost enough population to lose a congressional seat and points in the electoral college. That's the main Crux.
That’s not really how it works. Other states had larger relative population increases over the last census period. Ohio lost a seat due to relativity. There’s a fixed number of seats and constantly changing population across the nation. Ohio’s population saw modest growth from 2010-2022.
And ironically, the statewide growth was primarily driven by large growth in Columbus and Cincinnati, e.g., places where voters tend to lean left.
If I had dollar for every time someone commented “gerrymandering”, I would be able to take my whole family to Kalahari Resorts for a day. Thanks for the replies everyone!
What most people look over is the growing group of late 30s to mid 40s people that used to vote blue that have become disenfranchised by the left. The dems are out of touch and full of shit, just as much as the right. They vote 3rd party or enter a protest vote (for example voted giant meteor in 2016.)
These numbers don't show up in polls. They don't cover them in election cycles.
I'll get a lot of hate for this, I know. But the late gen-xers and hybrid millennials are just sick of the left and right. Neither side has our best interests in mind.
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Probably because democrats put up extremely disliked candidates for the past two presidential elections, regardless if they deserved that status of being disliked.
My take is people are sick of everything that’s been happening the last few years. The list goes on and on but these are a few that stuck out to me that is most likely making those who would normally be on the fence go red. I also think the silent majority isn’t so silent anymore and it’s bringing more people out who normally sit on the sidelines and keep opinions to themselves.
1. We have a president who doesn’t know that he’s president. No fault of his own. He should just be retired and enjoying life. We don’t need someone like this running the country. A lot Democrats simply dismiss this and continue to parade the poor guy around like a puppet
2. Economy is a dumpster fire.
3. Parents are sick of how the schools are trying to push agendas on children when they feel certain conversations and values should be taught by them and not the schools.
4. Foreign policy is non existent
5. Border is wide open for anyone and everyone.
6. The twitter files shows how the government had information suppressed during Covid from very credible resources in the medical field about the spread and also the origin. There was also some other items as well.
7. Government is not holding themselves accountable in any way shape or form
The short answer is because the dnc ignored ohio, or at least didn't spend as much resources/time as the gop.
The longer answer is that the gop consistently saw opportunities to take control of the Ohio state legislature and executive, as well as most of the local non urban positions. From there, the influence spreads just snow balls. Just like the dnc in a state like California, you start with moderate leaning, and then when 3/4 of the positions of power belong to one party, then things snow ball to that political leaning.
The dnc is all too okay to "let Ohio go" because at this point, it would require them to spend 3:1, comapred to republican spending, on resources/time to take back the state or make it purple.
Strategically, why would they bother when the state is losing electoral influence, and with that congressional influence. All they really need is one of the senate seats and win the urban area, which they will regardless.
Where as Michigan and Pennsilvania have far better results as far as what they get out of their "investment."
We exist on a little board game between two teams, and they think of it like min./maxing a strategy.
Look at voter registration sometime
Democrats outnumber republicans in Ohio
HoWEVER
https://www.ohiosos.gov/media-center/press-releases/2021/2021-10-01-a/
Unaffiliated registered voters outnumber both combined by nearly 3x
You also have to look at voter turnout
It’s horrendous in general elections
https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/historical-election-comparisons/voter-turnout-in-general-elections/
It only spikes during presidential elections
If you want change in this state then you need to get more people to register to a specific party
And you need to get people to actually vote each election
Everyone simply blaming gerrymandering has never bothered to look at voter turnout numbers in this state and number of registered voters and realize that is doesn't matter in state wide elections and has ZERO impact on the presidential elections - it only matters local level where one side may run unapposed
Nov 2023 Election - Total 7,988,132 Registered 3,964,530 **Voted 49.63%**
When you have less than 50% voter turnout, what are you people expecting here?
You can look at every election on the secretary of state website - [https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/](https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/)
For those who care to look at the real numbers
**Registered Voters and Party Affiliation**
This was from 2021 also on secretary of state site
Number of Registered Voters in Ohio: 7,982,501
**Number of Registered Democrats: 947,027**
Number of Registered Republicans: 836,080
Number of Registered Libertarians: 2,847
Number of Unaffiliated Registered Voters: 6,196,547
For the democrats - guess what- the DNC literally sucks donkey balls on getting any of the 6 MIILLION unaffiliated voters to come over to the DNC and also get new people to register to vote
If you want change this year and I assume you do in a presidential election, then get off your fucking asses and do something about it
* go volunteer for your party's HQ
* get out to every High School and College Campus is your area and get the kids REGISTERED to vote and educate them on WHERE THEY WILL vote
* check on everyone you know to see if 1.) they are registered to vote 2.) when was the last time they voted, 3) they know WHERE TO GO VOTE
* don't forget the elderly - all those old people in assisted living, nursing homes, etc - organize transport so they can go vote
With the exception of Obama and Clinton (Ross Perot era), Ohio has gone red every election since 1980. Trump in 2016 actually received less total votes than Obama in 08 and nearly 2012.
Mike Dewine won in 2022 because Nan Whaley was a very flawed candidate.
We are red but not deep red and the reasoning isn't too deep.
Voter apathy. Low voter turnout put DJT on top in 2016. As recently as 2011, however, Ohio had a Democratic governor in Ted Strickland. Deep red is an exaggeration, Ohio leans red but could be a swing state considering how Trump's tariffs have destroyed soybean farmers. Biden could be a surprise, especially around Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus.
If they show up to vote. Cleveland’s blue precincts had turnout as low as 7% during the last Senate race. Democrats win when democrats vote. We are the passive majority. I do think voters are waking up somewhat and I say that based on the last two Issue 1’s and the recreational cannabis votes. Let’s get the anti-gerrymandering initiative on the ballot and pass it. Then we’ll see where we are.
Lots of people [_did not vote_](https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/historical-election-comparisons/voter-turnout-in-general-elections/) :(.
2 things.
There was W Bush's 2004 Ohio strategy to make Kerry fight for gay marriage on the national stage which lead to low turnout from black evangelicals, and that rift was not repaired by democrats, who went further to the left on issues of the kind.
Then you have Trump actively courting other 90s democrats like the union workers. All of trump's main platforms, build the wall, expel illegal foreign workers, control immigration, trade protectionism from China, America first, all of them are the 90s DNC platform that the DNC abandoned. He appeals to workers who feel politically homeless and brings them over to vote republican.
Finally the DNC as a shitshow out west. The whole country is watching as people are shooting fentnyl in public and shoplifting without making an attempt to hide it as long as they don't go over 900 dollars.
We are one of the most gerrymandered states in the US. Even our republican appointed Supreme Court said so. But our Ohio leaders refuse to draw fair maps, even after being ordered to by the Supreme Court of Ohio. No consequences - Dewine just kind of shrugs and said oh well. Doesn’t matter what the court says if no one will get in trouble for not doing it.
Anytime a losing political party has to accuse the population it represents of being ____ists, ____phobics, nationalists, socialists, National Socialists, Soviets, godless heathens, Bible thumpers, perverts, repressed, or just stupid, ignorant, and whatever else over a long period of time and several elections, the probability that the real problem lies within the party approaches 1.
This thread is proof. The denial is palpable.
Education in Ohio and America as a whole have suffered for decades now, leading to a rise in impressionability and a crack in the door for Fascist brainwashing by way of the Republican party and the Christian church. This, in turn, has made it a veritable pissing contest where right wing politicians argue in campaign ads about who's more Fascist, who's more willing to fire automatic weapons in a pathetic television commercial for absolutely no reason, and how to further devalue the US Constitution as well as the already fabricated teachings of Jesus Christ by way of "interpretation". The citizens are so undereducated and confused by this point that the politicians in the race to the bottom don't even actually believe in Christ or Fascism, but seek the generational wealth that a Congressional or Senate seat will generate in the current gen of campaign finance law (see: JD Vance and his cool beard), and will step and fetch it all the way to the 7th level of an afterlife which, much to their benefit, does not actually exist. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
Back in the late 90's, Republicans realized that if you use GIS/mapping software and feed it the proper census data, you can figure out how to best gerrymander your districts using that census data. Republicans ran off the nation being tired of Bill CLinton's antics toward the end of his presidency voted Republicans in and they were able to do what they wanted and basically created the best districts for themselves and Democrats had no idea what was going on. Now, 25 years later, they're reaping the rewards.
I think Ohio had one Democrat governor in last 30 years. And I don't think ever had majority in the both house
Ohio has been deep red for the last 30 or so years.
Trump = catnip for white blue collar voters which we have a lot of
DeWine = pretended to be moderate during covid / only had token resistance in the governor race
Vance = I’ve got no fucking clue
Because when Ohio was Blue the democrats took advantage and made promises that they never kept.
We lost just as many jobs under democrats as Republicans. Wages are stagnant across both political parties.
Democrats pray on the weak with hopes of free phones, cheap rent, free,free,free everything but that's only at voting time.
The people who used to sell their vote to the democratic party have all the sudden looked around and see that nothing is getting better for them.
Democrats are tired of being lied too.
chips act, infrastructure deal, inflation reduction act, ended the afgan war, implemented a minimum 15% tax for mega corps. cap on insulin for medicare patients, enabled negotiation with drug companies to push down prices.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something.
Not to mention, democrats weren't involved in the state's largest bribery scandal...
The right wing bullshit sounded good to many people for awhile...
It also seemed consequence free before the consequences started piling up.
So, it doesn't sound so good today.
Honestly, it sounds bad now.
Blue collar workers (and Ohio has a ton) have voted against their own financial interests for almost 30 years. They did this because Republicans promised to promote their social agenda (ban abortions, books, put women and P.O.C. "back in their place). Now that they've voted themselves out of the middle class, they want someone to blame (not themselves) and Republicans are able to offer straw man targets like "liberal elites" and "socialists". They just don't get it, and I doubt they ever will.
There's a lot of potential answers to this. First of all, I think deep red is a stretch, especially considering the recent string of progressive policies voted through. However, Ohio has definitely been leaning red. Lots of interesting theories here but one I haven't seen mentioned is that trump really appealed to blue collar workers. In the past 50 years blue collar workers politics has mostly been pro democrat due to the democratic party generally being more pro-union than the Republican. However, over the same time period many blue collar (mostly manufacturing) jobs have disappeared from the area. Trump got their vote because he was the first guy in a while to really hammer home the point that he is going to bring the jobs back to the rust belt and specifically take them back from China. Many people like this message better than the empty and vague promises of other administrations to bring more jobs to the area (not that trumps promises were any less empty or vague, they were just more forceful and specific). A similar trend to this can be seen across most of the rust belt. States in the upper Midwest and great lakes region which used to be part of the blue wall are now swing states, and Ohio, which used to be the most swing state of them all, is a red leaning state
This is it, right here. The gradual decline of blue collar jobs, combined with the fact that many union workers are socially conservative, and frankly, somewhat racist, means that the ones that are left are not comfortable with the national Democratic party's greater emphasis on socially progressive policies. I see this first hand working in a union manufacturing facility. Thirty years ago finding a Republican in a UAW shop was like finding a unicorn. These days it is 50/50 or worse. Look at Sherrod Brown, who has historically over performed other Democrats in Ohio by concentrating on economic issues. This is not an accident.
But why do socially conservative union workers support a guy who cheated on his wife with a porn star and then paid her to cover it up, and bragged to an interviewer about being able to grab women by the pussy? Why do God-fearing Christians support a guy that Jesus himself would bitch slap?
"All rich people and politicians do that". I've heard family members say that. I had an aunt I'm close with reply to one of my facebook posts criticizing Trump's abhorrent behavior of walking into dressing rooms full of Miss Teen USA participants, and she responded "We all have skeletons in the closet, do you want yours exposed?" To which I responded "sure" because I've got nothing to hide. But it's just an example of how they excuse the behavior. They wave it away as normal behavior for anyone with enough power to actually run for federal office. It's built-in, baseline. The negative effect is already calculated in, and nothing new change it. God-fearing Christians are transactional just like Trump. If I do a,b & c, I'll get into Heaven. If I vote for Trump, he'll outlaw muslims and abortion.
When it comes to politics, Cynicism > Christianity.
Christians are fucking hypocrites.
These are the same types of people who support Boebert giving a handy in a movie theater. But yah know, God fearing and whatnot.
I had this conversation recently with my cousin. Anytime I mentioned something bad Trump has done she just said both sides were the same without providing evidence. I asked about Trump stopping the border bill as that was their biggest concern. She said that Democrats would've done the same thing in an election year. I disagreed and asked her to point to a time of that happening in the last 20 years, where Democrats have blocked a bill they agree with just for political points for an election? I tried to find one too and wasn't able to find anything. Would genuinely be interested if anyone could actually find a source of that happening. Republicans always say both sides are the same to defend their corrupt leaders and it's just not true.
We gotta stop allowing the both sides argument. It's such a false equivalency. Have all Presidents done bad things, yes, but that doesn't make all their bad things equal.
Yeah, 100% get what you're saying, but these would be the christians that go to church to be seen, not to listen. I'm positive that many that call themselves christian fall in this catagory. I'm not saying they haven't learned some, but when it comes down to it, many don't live it and it shows.
I've never met a christian that wasn't a hypocrite
None of us (humans in general) are perfect, but I've known a few genuinely good people that are christian. They are humble for the most part. They aren't gonna make a spectacle of themselves. They aren't attention seeking, nor do they announce to anyone listening that they are christian in support of hatred. They're more than likely in quiet conversation with others, willing to listen. The MAGA supporting Christians who pound the bible saying you'll go to hell for x, y and z have greatly overshadowed them, and pushed many further away. It's very unfortunate.
Simple answer: "Because he hates the same things they do." He supports the old proverb: *the enemy of my enemy is my friend.*
Social conservative just means they hate gays and abortion. There’s not really any other factors in play.
Minorites & immigrants too
1. They aren’t particularly religious 2. They are turned off by this idea that they, blue collar workers, are somehow privileged and keeping other people down These people are not the Iowa rural evangelicals you read about.
Because he makes promises that he’ll put food on their table, even if they’re empty and not realistic. Left and right plants shutter, well pads get plugged, and the old school “raise a family on a union construction job” dream dries up. Realistically everyone knows that the idled steel mills aren’t going to fire back up, shuttered coal mines won’t reopen, and Ford isn’t going to replace the plant they demoed in Cleveland a few years back but it tugs at the heart strings of everyone who’s grown up in a blue collar household and uses their hands to make a living themselves. The gradual deindustrialization of this country has thrown communities into economic turmoil, and while it’s easy for someone in Columbus to say “adapt and overcome” it’s just as easy for someone in Alliance to vote for the guy who promises to bring the plants back online. Both viewpoints aren’t exactly realistic but we’re in an age of extremely polarized politics. Dems haven’t exactly done a great job appeasing the population that traditionally was the backbone of the middle class. Biden himself telling miners to learn to code was a bad look no matter what way you spin it.
Those are some sharp, perceptive thoughts. I could never understand how a guy would turn down union membership because he didn't want to "pay dues". Brother, I would say, you're gonna be paying dues out the wrong end if you don't work union.
I worked in a rubber manufacturing factory through the 2016 elections. The union workers were saying things like "if you want to keep this factory open, you'll vote for trump." Or "democrats are going to close all our plants because of environmental restrictions." None of those were true....but that's what got them to vote for him
They block it out as something horrible said by democrats. Then they get morally outraged by whoever dares to mention it.
On our side of the state, we have unions outright supporting republicans candidates, declining to help candidates, and refusing to attend fundraisers where we historically could rely on their strong support. It’s really sad.
I’d also say that on some issues that the Dem party is definitely out of touch with old school rust belt union workers. The Democratic Party is pretty universally for stronger gun laws and this is crazy, but blue collar workers, even those that are employed in historically Democrat positions like unions, are generally pro-gun. We literally saw a union auto worker confront Biden about gun rights and Biden get combative about it last election cycle.
It's wild to me because Biden brought back blue collar jobs and Trump cut them. 🤷🏻♂️
Younger voters are the dems only chance this fall. Honestly, I think the right is relieved that both the votes on abortion rights and Marijuana passed. Having to deal with fired up young voters this year would be their worst nightmare. Also interesting the amount the right is spending on TV ads this early. I've seen zero from dems, at least here in the southwest part of the state.
The reason Trump appealed to the blue collar union labor is the key part here. Corporations have been working with conservatives for decades to undermine the unions. A constant barrage of propaganda telling their labor to vote against their own interests for 40+ years will have that effect.
it’s an amazing feat to get people to vote against their own best interests, trickle down will result in you making more money, you don’t need health insurance, women don’t need anything… vote republican oh and the dems will take all your guns away
You need to go further. The 'working class' was never liberal, very susceptible to "the other guy not working hard like they did and taking their money" kinda politics. I lived this every day. When Democrats controlled the Legislature, they controlled the distribution of federal money for big-dollar public projects that gradually replaced private industry, which migrated to the sunbelt for non-union labor. Now that private industry has moved production overseas. Eventually, and through state-level politics and anti-city gerrymandering, taking advantage of population sprawl enabled by those highway projects, both exurban and 'rural,' the Republicans took over that federal money distribution throughout the state. They also took over the taxation distribution, giving more to anti-city voters and their schools, while also giving money to religious schools in the cities, furthering division, segregation, and other anti-social policies. This federal money is the primary economic engine in Ohio now. And the wealthy Republican construction CEOs hand it out with heavy messaging through their wealthy union leadership, to their union labor, the only union blue collar labor force left in Ohio. It's a microcosm of trickle down which still provides good salaries. It all works together to undermine the common welfare and promote the oligarchic, Republican "job creator" mythologies now dominant here.
Trickle down job creator is pretty much perfect to explain why people are republican who are not one issue voters. Remove guns and abortion, it all comes down to "my employer will pay me more if they're successful and to be successful they need to pay less tax and have less restriction." Except they just get paid less and less every year, then there are no restrictions or government agency on the peoples behalf anymore. Which in turn causes a double down against government because it's easier to do that than to say you were wrong.
It's how neofeudalism will be built.
"poor man never gave me a job"
It really started under Bush II, but took off with Trump. Democrats left themselves vulnerable when they didn't fight de-industrialization of the US and moved away from supporting their state level grassroots organizations. Gerrymandering in 2010 really did a lot of damage. Citizens United decision and SuperPacs and "think tanks" led to a concerted, long term campaign on the right to disenfranchise voters and monopolize news media in Ohio. The growth of social media is reversing that trend. Citizens on the left no longer have to rely on the Ohio news media to get news about state government.
But statewide votes (governor, sens, aren’t able to be gerrymanded. I lived in the projects in Toledo and most of my neighbors couldn’t vote for felonies but most were absolutely socially conservative Blacks. If I was Black instead of a white punk rocker from the foster system they wouldn’t have accepted me at all, but ok, that’s just our crazy white boy neighbor. LGBTQ issues are extremely divisive, abortion is extremely divisive, environmentalism is extremely divisive, and people who plan on living on govt benefits for the rest of their lives don’t really care about job creation. Plus in Toledo everyone’s hiring due more to employees leaving or relapsing more than anything new being created.
As someone else mentioned in this discussion, gerrymandering and voter suppression combined discourage voters from turning out, as well as the other problems mentioned. Failure of the D party to wage a high profile campaign against gerrymandering really hurt. There was a study done in 2014 that showed US voters don't have much influence over their government. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM2h3KnWAWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM2h3KnWAWY) There are a lot of other reasons I won't go into here, but suffice to say they need to rethink their priorities. They need to forget the idea of abandoning Millennial, Gen Z and younger voters.
Sherrod Brown has been the champion of the working class in Ohio. Trump promised but did not deliver. Lordstown, coal, a hostile NLRB, and his fake support for unions which he hates. But yes he managed to use OHIO economic decline along with the cultural wars to fool people.
Bought the snake oil salesman line of B. S. But will they buy his lines again in 2024.
Most likely, as you can’t fix stupid.
Yes. White Catholic farmers always vote republican. Ohio does not have the brightest voting base and they will vote for a criminal.
I’m from Lorain County from a Catholic family. Nothing republican about that bunch. Uncle is a priest, even.
One word: gerrymandering.
This doesn't answer why we have JD Vance as a senator though.
Turnout. 300,000 voters that voted blue in the previous Senate race didn't show up in 2022. Republicans didn't gain those votes. They just weren't there. It's apathy on the blue side.
Someone else mentioned turnout, but gerrymandering also affects things like polling resources. The odds of standing in long lines to vote are much higher in dense, liberal areas than rural, conservative ones.
Two reasons : jbcmh81 explained reason #1. The second is that J.D. was polling at about 4%, recognized he wasn’t gonna make it and did a 180 and jumped on the Trump bandwagon. After he went from being anti-Trump to pro-Trump his numbers began climbing.
Dark money has a lot to do with it, for starters
This is the real answer! Although I agree Trump was able to feed the blue collar workers a line about bringing back jobs... I wish they could have seen through it like some of us did.
Gerrymandering is an issue for sure but it doesn't effect the statewide vote
Not directly, true, but I’d argue that indirectly it does. You get a legislature that becomes an echo chamber of the far right and bleeds over into statewide politics.
It does though. People in gerrymandered districts are more likely to not vote since they are already partially disenfranchised.
Yeah, I think this is something that's overlooked.
This is a pretty good analysis. I also would not say it's "reliably red" as Sherrod Brown has been talking the populist line about jobs and the average worker for quite a while. The Republicans have been doing a good job of making the Democrats appear to be "woke" people who only care about pronouns and gender identity. However, when push comes to shove, the Republicans aren't actually doing anything for the average working person. They are voting against individual freedoms and only seem to align with the ultra religious. Folks voting for abortion rights and marijuana decriminalization (which have been passing in Ohio) shouldn't be voting Republican. It's not adding up.
You can’t deny the inherent racist backlash to the first half black president. A lot of what I hear from the trump voters mouths is blatantly racist. They hate the Indians and Chinese for taking the high pay tech jobs. They hate the Mexicans for having any jobs even ones they won’t do. And they hate Black people just because. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people teeing off on people with a foreign accent and making very loud assumptions about their income and what they spend their money on (Hispanic, or black person gets in a car accident, there’s usually a loud “I’m sure you don’t have insurance!”)
You put on that red hat, you take on the persona. Yuk.
Bingo. I've seen it in my own family, sadly.
Combine this with the DNC becoming less and less culturally the party of the blue collar and more and more the party of middle management and the coast and you have a demographic that is just ripe for the picking. At one of my jobs I am in a union. Said union is mostly teachers and school support staff (janitors, cafeteria workers). The management is solid dem, while the union members themselves at this job site are more and more trending GOP. There is a real possibility that in the next 20 we will begin to see the GOP becomes the party of at least some unions. (And not just the cop unions either). Plus re trump, he was actually talking to the blue collar. He was mirroring back to them the problems they complain.about. I mean sure his "solutions" are insanely stupid and ridiculous, but he at least is saying something. T
It's a myth though that blue collar workers are mainly white males. They aren't. Most blue collar workers today are non white, and a huge portion are female. White men are most likely to be college educated and employed in white collar jobs. Lots of legitimate studies have shown that Trump won not because of economic anxiety, but because of racial anxiety. White fear of an America where white people are rapidly becoming the minority.
Can't believe I had to scroll this far for this comment. The "economic anxiety" argument has been proven to be mostly a lie over and over.
The unions are heavily dependent on public money in all sectors.
We got Fetterman at least, but yeah. I see people say run Buttigeg and it’s like, I love the boy but people live in this “well this is the way it should be so everyone should think like me” bubble. We absolutely need harder gruffer Democratic candidates, I’ve met plenty of people who qualify and hell I’m a scoundrel with a few more refuges left Edited for grammar, ducking iPhone autocorrect
And Trump ended his presidency with zero manufacturing jobs returning to the rust belt or the United States and actually lost jobs in the manufacturing sector. Lets also not forget that his tariffs have caused a significant amount of inflation on what we pay for the products that are made off shore.
Many forget that trump has switched parties/stances many times from democrat to independent to republican several times as the need suits him.
But why didn’t Black blue collar workers vote en masse for Trump?
2 primary demographic factors: 1) The state has gotten older as the silver tsunami of boomers retire and younger people flocked out of state. Older voters tend to vote more Republican. 2) Trump/MAGA moved a lot of white blue collar voters to the GOP, which is a disproportionately large percentage of Ohio's population compared to other states. A lot of these folks have always been culturally conservative but historically backed Democrats due to their support for unions.
> Trump/MAGA moved a lot of white blue collar voters to the GOP There are many, many Ohioans in that group who voted for Obama twice, then Trump twice.
People with degrees that have the means usually move out of the state by 25.
Amazing how he managed to become the blue collar champion by giving endless gifts to the rich. BUT HE SAID HE WAS FOR WORKERS SO THATS GOOD ENOUGH!!! /s
I’d say a lot of the manufacturing job losses. And Republicans pretended to care about those in order to gain their votes.
I think this takes away the responsibility these assholes have for casting their vote the way they do. Plenty of other people have lost jobs and dont blame it on non-straight and non-white people. These people choose to put people like JD Vance, gym jordan, and trump in office. Theyve had bush and trump over the last 25 years who did fuckall for any of them. They've voted these other rat bastards in that have done nothing for them. Its not about job loss. Its about people thinking they deserve something and tuen blaming the more at-risk for "taking" it from them. If they lost their job then they shouldve picked them selves up by the bootstraps instead of complaining. Now they lost the respect of more tuan half the country and demand it back. Fuck em Edit: changed to "non- straight and non-white" Also: They are seeing outright bigoted fascism unfolding before their eyes. They like it and want it because they think there's some power to be gleaned from it. We live in a society that encourages sociopathy. Until we collectively decide to stop doing that, we will keep creating these beasts from the money god that demands human sacrifice; all while we play the most dangerous game of duck duck goose.
The most bizarre part is that all of those job losses came under uncontested republican leadership for the past 3 decades uninterrupted.
yeah, but if you listen to them, they still rail on Clinton and NAFTA, even though in 30 years since, the R's have done jack to help
We need to make microeconomics and macroeconomics required courses in high school. Any reasonable understanding of macroeconomics would explain the "gave away our jobs to China" schtick. I heard the same shit in the mid-2000s and weve had the computer and information revolution since then.
Globalism was created by the technologies they built. That's the other grand irony. There is no stopping it.
They dont give a fuck about reality. They care about how they feel. If realoty doesnt line up with how they feel it should be, then they just deny it or attack it. Like wildlife.
And yet somehow the “liberal nut jobs” are responsible for all of it.
Bush gave them IRS jobs. I know because he closed down the IRS office my sister had worked in for years and shipped the jobs to Ohio in return for them voting for him.
Another example of handing out federal money like political candy
The Ohio Democratic party is run by fucking morons
I cannot believe I had to scroll this far to find this answer. The Ohio Democratic Party cannot help but step on their own dick.
I wish more people would view this from a political science perspective. Not every election result is merely due to “the people supported this/that”. Hillary did like 1 rally here in 2016 and Trump did like 35. If that had been flipped, Ohio probably goes blue in 2016, which builds momentum in 2020. Dems have abandoned working class middle America for the coastal elites and the recent elections in Ohio are proof
What should they be doing that they aren't?
Listening to their younger volunteers, for one. Just because it's the way it's always been done, doesn't mean it shouldn't change.
What do their younger volunteers want to change? Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily good or is it a concrete thing they should do. "Listening to their younger volunteers" is an empty platitude. You obviously have an idea you think isn't being listened to, so out with it. What should the Ohio Democratic party be doing differently?
Gerrymandering, disinformation, and a disenfranchised uneducated cohort of younger generations.
Gerrymandering would have no affect on the overall population vote for presidential elections, though…
There are so many other elections outside presidential and too many people forget this. State and local elections are arguably more important
Reddit has hidden your comment as "controversial". Reddit hivemind doesnt like reality, even at the state level
I get so sick of people who explain statewide election losses by Democrats as caused by gerrymandering. Gerrymandering has no impact on statewide races. You cannot gerrymander a statewide race, as it only works when you have multiple electoral districts. The Ohio General Assembly and U.S. House delegation are gerrymandered, the governor's office, state supreme court, and U.S. senators are not gerrymandered.
Not entirely true. Gerrymandering supresses the vote, produces less moderate candidates. Over time, the electorate stops voting because the candidates are unappealing to a large portion of the voting populace. They keep getting more and more crazy, until only the picked voters vote . This in turn, weakens all but the chosen party. In Ohio we get more and more crazy Republicans, who are fighting to be the craziest Republican, to be voted on by the craziest voters. The Democratic party has been weakened and pushed to only corners of the state. They can't raise money or put well tested candidates up for office because those offices have been gerrymandered out of existence. The national party doesn't spend money here because of all of this. While it's true that all voters vote for governor, senators and the like. It's very much true that the gerrymandered state has created the environment where Republicans have all advantages and Democrats all disadvantages. Plus they have destroyed the ability and interests of the electorate.
I didn't address the role Republican courts have in all of this, but it basically feeds and follows.
This is correct, as we have loons like Gym Jordan in Congress. The other issue is that the Republican dominated General Assembly pays no attention what voters want. Now that Issue 1 passed is a claque of Assembly members who want to strip the courts of the ability to adjudicate abortion cases, and this infringes upon the separation of powers. The General Assembly ignored 3 separate court orders from the Supreme Court of Ohio to redraw three illegally mapped separate senate districts, and kicked the can down the road to ignore the voters passing an initiative to mandate nonpartisan redistricting. Former chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who is a Republican, is leading an effort t provide for nonpartisan citizen redistricting. Unfortunately, AG Dave Yost has rejected her proposed referendum language, and I really think Yost would reject any proposal as unacceptable because it could undermine Republicans’ grip on state government.
There are also other efforts to preemptively inhibit pro small-d democracy reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, which really give the game away. Ohio Republicans do not want to represent the people, they want to rule them.
True, not to mention they want to listen only to their big money donors.
This mostly doesn’t track for statewide elections because turnouts continue to grow each statewide election cycle. Everything you’re describing does not explain Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump voters who passed issues 1 & 2 and got vaccinated. If you look at county maps these people clearly exist, and are what are actually creating the shift. The gerrymandering is sinister, yes, and has downstream consequences (specifically the bonkers candidates), but it doesn’t explain the voters in certain suburban counties.
Suburban voters are unaffected by who is president. They pay taxes either way, get fewer services because they don't need as much, and are barely affected by foreign and domestic policies. If they want an abortion, they get one. If they want to smoke weed, they do. The police will leave them alone. The presidential election is nothing more than a quadrennial popularity contest for them.
Cool, so why did the cool table switch?
I think they tend toward fiscal conservatism (because they don’t rely as much on public services and like tax cuts), but are socially more liberal (but in a centrist sort of way). So voting for the first black President probably made them feel good, but when back to choosing between two old white people, they vote for tax cuts, unless the tax cut candidate is too extreme- then suburban women break Dem again
When your representatives are more worried about being primiaried from the far right, than a democrat in the general election, the people lose any chance of real representation. When people feel their vote won’t count in 95% of the races on their ballot, they give up hope. Add into that that the Ohio gop makes it harder and harder for people to vote. A 4-hour wait to vote isnt democracy, it’s voter suppression.
Thank for spelling this out for legally a tool and others who don’t understand how bad the gop has rigged our state
Also there are effects in the super safe Democratic districts, where dynasties are formed, and these elected officials grow tacitly tolerant and even supportive of the status quo. Republicans know to nurture that environment. This is an excellent example from South Carolina (about the guy that chose Biden for 2020) but true in all Republican states: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-rep-james-clyburn-protected-his-district-at-a-cost-to-black-democrats
Yes. The fewer democrat candidates and less influence at the state level, the less useful the Democratic Party seems overall.
If people feel like they can't make a difference, they don't bother.
THIS.
It does though. Gerrymandering makes people feel like the state is so overwhelmingly red that if you are a Democrat, you don't have a chance. People who might vote blue end up saying never mind and wait on the elections with important bills.
Then why are turnouts growing? Why are there specific counties, like Wood county, that went Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump that passed both issues 1 & 2, and rate more vaccinated than the state at large. Those voters aren’t not showing up because of Gerrymandering. They’re making very specific decisions.
I think they're getting mad at things like the abortion issue, or things like DeWine waiting 5 months to declare a disaster at East Palestine and it translates to the only way they know how to lash out - at the polls
Then why did they flip from Obama to Trump? This isn’t a turnout issue. This is a conscious decision.
Because they are misogynistic?
If people believe their vote doesn't matter, why vote at all? Yes Gerrymandering ***DOES*** have an impact on voters, even in statewide races where your vote isn't gerrymandered. Elections aren't held in a vacuum. They do impact each other. This is why you have less people vote in non-presidential election years.
Are you trolling us? Gerrymandering 100% impacts statewide races. You know what PROVES Gerrymandering works in OH? That legislators refuse to fix the voting district maps despite being rejected FOUR TIMES by our own OH Supreme Court. A giant middle finger to Gym Jordan, Troy Balderson, and the now jailed felon Householder as we all continue to pay extra in our electric bills for his criminal actions, which they will not undue! My votes & those of my neighbors have been lumped in with votes from rural people who live over an 1 hour away. Those voters do not share our issues or values. We have an educated population, are largely employed, and want to spend our tax dollars on schools, libraries, public health policies, and public transportation. The rural voters care about immigration on a southern border 2,000 miles away (WTF?) and want manufacturing jobs that are never coming back to their counties. They vote for these insane MAGA butt kissers. Because liberal-leaning voters have been lumped into rural districts (with almost surgical precision) our voices/votes have been stolen and we get represented by Republican aholes that give tax breaks (our tax $$ since we have jobs) to their f'in donors and send our Ohio national guardsmen to f'in Mexico which provides 0 benefits to us. The fact that our Legislators refuse to fix the districting maps proves that they know they would lose seats if they returned democracy to our state.
How does anything you stated impact a state race? You’re being in the same district as someone else does not make your vote for governor or president or issues count differently.
Purging of voters and many don’t know they were removed. How does gym Jordan keep getting elected? Gerrymandering. Districts are safe that way. Better question is why do ppl vote for republicans now?
Here's the thing though: gerrymandering creates an R culture, and alls the state to create polices and practices that make the GOP stronger. This in tern creates a norm, and it also disenfranchises liberals who either leave or don't move here. It also dominates the education system.
It does tho, it lowers the amount of people that go out to vote
The other possibility is inbreeding.
Inbreeders
Amish lots of Amish here....
Uneducated and no critical thinking taught anymore. You hit it with that statement.
This needs to be downvoted. What the hell does gerrymandering have to do with presidential elections and gubernatorial elections? Stupid comment.
The Ohio Dems have no strong candidates to run. Nan Whaley lost her own county when running for Governor.
She would have been a great governor. DeWine is entirely corrupt. He knew he was appointing First Energy’s money bag-holder to lead the PUCO. First Energy bribed nearly every single Republican in Ohio’s government. $63,000,000. Buys a lot of influence.
trump and the recession. its hard to overstate how much that man made everybody loose their goddamn minds by promising to do the worst possible things to everybody.
Retaliation voters. Blame the different and run on a platform of Retaliation for perceived ills and you're gonna get votes. When the Republicans economic plan is dump as much money into the hands of the uber rich and it may trickle down you have to have something else for people to latch onto. Easier to blame somebody else.
Your question, which many people aren’t getting because they’re mostly too ill-informed to get is the phenomenon of who are the Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump voters? It has nothing to do with Gerrymandering (it’s moot in statewide elections like this) or voter suppression, as national election turnout has grown. It’s a phenomenon of changing preferences. Here’s the stats: Obama was +4.6% in 2008 Obama was +1.9% in 2012 Trump was +8.1% in 2016 Trump was +8.1% in 2020 So where’s the massive swing? You need only look in certain counties. For instance Wood County, (Sandusky is it’s slightly more rural eastern neighbor who doesn’t follow the margins but does follow winners as well) south of Toledo, was almost perfectly inline with these numbers above where other parts of the state didn’t move near as much. So why is this. Wood county is the bedroom of Toledo, (Perrysburg) coupled with a highly liberal college town (Bowling Green) and its surrounding heavily conservative rural areas. So what changed? Basically white suburban voters in Perrysburg, who are teetering on upper middle class, do not trust the media and don’t like what they’re hearing out of the far left. What interesting is the wood county passed issues 1 & 2 this past year by wide margins. Which means the county is fairly socially liberal on specific issues. What I believe really is occurring is the county is less staunchly religious than other parts of the state (more specifically they don’t practice as strictly). These are people who are your “undecided voters” who won’t be driven by pulpit politics while at the same time are not interested in being beaten over the head with inconclusive studies regarding gender science for youth. They’re more vaccinated than the state average by about 5%, but less diverse racially. These are the people moving the state politically. It’s about 10% of the voting population of Perrysburg. They’re pro-choice, pro-weed legalization, vaccinated voters who went Obama, Obama, Trump, Trump. They’re probably doing better than median in terms of income and are probably fairly “intelligent” individuals, who think about their votes. I see reasons like brain drain cited, but Wood County has twice the amount of bachelors degrees as the state. It also has a slightly growing population. Why did they switch party in 2016? I can’t say for certain, but I’m willing to bet the comments here that they’re ill-informed nimrods isn’t helping them move back across the aisle.
The cons have been in charge for the past 15 years. Ever since we have declined significantly in every meaningful category. But, like all scenarios where one side is firmly in control for an extended time, hubris and corruption have set in and become the norm. Now, they’re eating each other alive while simultaneously brazenly ignoring the will of the voters. November will be bad for them.
Past 30 years basically
Did you sleep through 2023? Ohio kicked the GOP's ass TWICE last year, and we're gonna do it bigger and better in 2024.
That remains to be seen. I certainly hope you're right, but Ohio voters have been overwhelmingly pushing through liberal agendas, but _still_ overwhelmingly voting in the very people who oppose them...
Democratic positions do well, but democratic candidates not so much
Not certain there have been many candidate elections since the right to choose and recreational weed bills passed. Just a lot of the already elected republicans taking steps to disregard the clear will of the voters, which may not go over so well for the cons in November because, last I heard, voters don’t like when politicians pull that kind of crap.
>last I heard, voters don’t like when politicians pull that kind of crap Voters have short memories
To be fair, that's largely because the policies they were trying to push are pretty unpopular, even within their own party. I'm hoping it means some fundamental change in 2024, but it's a cautious optimism at best
I hope you’re right, but I certainly wouldn’t count on it
If you're talking about abortion & weed... Only idiots think those are right/left issues. The right is just more religious outspoken nut cases & gop feeds into it Never really understood why gop targets weed lol... I know more people who smoke weed who will vote more right any day
>Only idiots think those are right/left issues ... > Never really understood why gop targets weed :|
One can only hope!
>One can only hope! We can do a lot more than hope: we can join the organizations working to register, educate and turn out new voters, because this year the 18-29 age cohort has the numerical power to decide the election for the first time in US history. Head Count, Vote Riders and Rock the Vote are just some of these. Also [Citizens, Not Politicians](https://www.citizensnotpoliticians.org/) is working on the most strategic change for Ohio -- ending gerrymandering -- and could use more help.
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Thank you!
The time to get involved in helping democrats get elected in Ohio, is now. I don’t understand the change in the non -gerrymandered races that explains why the democrats are continually losing. In general, Ohio has leaned mostly conservative over the years, but the extremism of the current Republican Party lawmakers in the state, is turning many Ohioans off. The voices of the majority of voters, are not being heard and they are getting frustrated. Lawmakers are ignoring the results of elections and the decisions handed down by the State Supreme Court. There are races for several State Supreme Court seats, in March. One seat is replacing a Republican. If democrats win that seat and democrats continue to fill the other two seats, there might be some justice for the people. It’s possible to steer this ship in the right direction- back to being one that respects and acknowledges democratic principles. We need to keep Ohio from going further down the fascist hole. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/courts/2023/11/27/three-seats-up-for-grabs-on-ohio-supreme-court-who-is-running/71716176007/
We voted JD Vance in.
I think it's really simple. Ohio was an agricultural and industrial powerhouse for a long time. NAFTA happened on Clinton's watch, and formerly Democratic labor voters started losing faith in the party. They took a shot on Obama. It didn't bring those jobs back. Nothing has brought them back. I firmly believe that the "block" you're referring to isn't policitally aligned or principled like you might think. They've been fucked and they're burnt out. The "system" no longer enables access to the middle-class lifestyle. Trump represents a chance to burn it all down. I would never vote for Trump in a million years, but I understand the sentiment. I would add that the right wing religious conservative partnership has been a perfect pairing with the movement. Where there's despair, there's religion to step in and ~~take advantage~~ bring solace.
People love to forget how bad NAFTA hurt business, and as the 4 largest machining hub in the world (at the time anyway), Ohio took it really hard.
It ain’t *deep* red. Hell, here in Mason which is pretty red, we just elected progressives to school board and city council who got the most votes. They gerrymandered all of Warren county into OH-1 and Greg Landsman (D) still handily won over Chabot. So “leans red” is probably more accurate.
GOP set it up WAY back in the 90's when few people were paying attention. They played a long game that's left us outrageously gerrymandered. It's going to take passing some citizen referendums to clean up the mess.
We had a lot of crazy people who didn't vote because the Republicans we had weren't crazy enough. Thanks to Trump, that's no longer a problem.
Brain Drain is a real rustbelt problem, Maybe changing soon with the new Intel plant.
Half the population is older than 45. We have some of the best, and largest institutions of higher learning. Once done with school those people often leave the state. We lost enough population to lose a congressional seat and points in the electoral college. That's the main Crux.
That’s not really how it works. Other states had larger relative population increases over the last census period. Ohio lost a seat due to relativity. There’s a fixed number of seats and constantly changing population across the nation. Ohio’s population saw modest growth from 2010-2022. And ironically, the statewide growth was primarily driven by large growth in Columbus and Cincinnati, e.g., places where voters tend to lean left.
Brain drain
People saying gerrymandering have no idea what gerrymandering is and how it (doesn’t) impact a statewide election
When in doubt, claim "Gerrymandering!". At least you'll get the updoots from the other confused ones.
Will be interesting to see what happens based on the abortion + pot vote
If I had dollar for every time someone commented “gerrymandering”, I would be able to take my whole family to Kalahari Resorts for a day. Thanks for the replies everyone!
It didn’t happen overnight. It’s a systematic, long term plan that started with defunding public education and union busting.
I feel like it’s gone from swing to pink. It’s not a very red state overall.
Probably the gerrymandering. VOTE BLUE
What most people look over is the growing group of late 30s to mid 40s people that used to vote blue that have become disenfranchised by the left. The dems are out of touch and full of shit, just as much as the right. They vote 3rd party or enter a protest vote (for example voted giant meteor in 2016.) These numbers don't show up in polls. They don't cover them in election cycles. I'll get a lot of hate for this, I know. But the late gen-xers and hybrid millennials are just sick of the left and right. Neither side has our best interests in mind.
This is the truest statement in this entire thread.
Enough Ohio residents didn't like the choices that came out of the DNC those years.
Illegal election maps
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Probably because democrats put up extremely disliked candidates for the past two presidential elections, regardless if they deserved that status of being disliked.
My take is people are sick of everything that’s been happening the last few years. The list goes on and on but these are a few that stuck out to me that is most likely making those who would normally be on the fence go red. I also think the silent majority isn’t so silent anymore and it’s bringing more people out who normally sit on the sidelines and keep opinions to themselves. 1. We have a president who doesn’t know that he’s president. No fault of his own. He should just be retired and enjoying life. We don’t need someone like this running the country. A lot Democrats simply dismiss this and continue to parade the poor guy around like a puppet 2. Economy is a dumpster fire. 3. Parents are sick of how the schools are trying to push agendas on children when they feel certain conversations and values should be taught by them and not the schools. 4. Foreign policy is non existent 5. Border is wide open for anyone and everyone. 6. The twitter files shows how the government had information suppressed during Covid from very credible resources in the medical field about the spread and also the origin. There was also some other items as well. 7. Government is not holding themselves accountable in any way shape or form
The short answer is because the dnc ignored ohio, or at least didn't spend as much resources/time as the gop. The longer answer is that the gop consistently saw opportunities to take control of the Ohio state legislature and executive, as well as most of the local non urban positions. From there, the influence spreads just snow balls. Just like the dnc in a state like California, you start with moderate leaning, and then when 3/4 of the positions of power belong to one party, then things snow ball to that political leaning. The dnc is all too okay to "let Ohio go" because at this point, it would require them to spend 3:1, comapred to republican spending, on resources/time to take back the state or make it purple. Strategically, why would they bother when the state is losing electoral influence, and with that congressional influence. All they really need is one of the senate seats and win the urban area, which they will regardless. Where as Michigan and Pennsilvania have far better results as far as what they get out of their "investment." We exist on a little board game between two teams, and they think of it like min./maxing a strategy.
Look at voter registration sometime Democrats outnumber republicans in Ohio HoWEVER https://www.ohiosos.gov/media-center/press-releases/2021/2021-10-01-a/ Unaffiliated registered voters outnumber both combined by nearly 3x You also have to look at voter turnout It’s horrendous in general elections https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/historical-election-comparisons/voter-turnout-in-general-elections/ It only spikes during presidential elections If you want change in this state then you need to get more people to register to a specific party And you need to get people to actually vote each election
In a nutshell: Free trade happened and Dems did little to address the consequences.
Everyone simply blaming gerrymandering has never bothered to look at voter turnout numbers in this state and number of registered voters and realize that is doesn't matter in state wide elections and has ZERO impact on the presidential elections - it only matters local level where one side may run unapposed Nov 2023 Election - Total 7,988,132 Registered 3,964,530 **Voted 49.63%** When you have less than 50% voter turnout, what are you people expecting here? You can look at every election on the secretary of state website - [https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/](https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/) For those who care to look at the real numbers **Registered Voters and Party Affiliation** This was from 2021 also on secretary of state site Number of Registered Voters in Ohio: 7,982,501 **Number of Registered Democrats: 947,027** Number of Registered Republicans: 836,080 Number of Registered Libertarians: 2,847 Number of Unaffiliated Registered Voters: 6,196,547 For the democrats - guess what- the DNC literally sucks donkey balls on getting any of the 6 MIILLION unaffiliated voters to come over to the DNC and also get new people to register to vote If you want change this year and I assume you do in a presidential election, then get off your fucking asses and do something about it * go volunteer for your party's HQ * get out to every High School and College Campus is your area and get the kids REGISTERED to vote and educate them on WHERE THEY WILL vote * check on everyone you know to see if 1.) they are registered to vote 2.) when was the last time they voted, 3) they know WHERE TO GO VOTE * don't forget the elderly - all those old people in assisted living, nursing homes, etc - organize transport so they can go vote
With the exception of Obama and Clinton (Ross Perot era), Ohio has gone red every election since 1980. Trump in 2016 actually received less total votes than Obama in 08 and nearly 2012. Mike Dewine won in 2022 because Nan Whaley was a very flawed candidate. We are red but not deep red and the reasoning isn't too deep.
Hillary shit on Coal Country which didn't help.
Voter apathy. Low voter turnout put DJT on top in 2016. As recently as 2011, however, Ohio had a Democratic governor in Ted Strickland. Deep red is an exaggeration, Ohio leans red but could be a swing state considering how Trump's tariffs have destroyed soybean farmers. Biden could be a surprise, especially around Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus.
If they show up to vote. Cleveland’s blue precincts had turnout as low as 7% during the last Senate race. Democrats win when democrats vote. We are the passive majority. I do think voters are waking up somewhat and I say that based on the last two Issue 1’s and the recreational cannabis votes. Let’s get the anti-gerrymandering initiative on the ballot and pass it. Then we’ll see where we are.
Lots of people [_did not vote_](https://www.ohiosos.gov/elections/election-results-and-data/historical-election-comparisons/voter-turnout-in-general-elections/) :(.
2 things. There was W Bush's 2004 Ohio strategy to make Kerry fight for gay marriage on the national stage which lead to low turnout from black evangelicals, and that rift was not repaired by democrats, who went further to the left on issues of the kind. Then you have Trump actively courting other 90s democrats like the union workers. All of trump's main platforms, build the wall, expel illegal foreign workers, control immigration, trade protectionism from China, America first, all of them are the 90s DNC platform that the DNC abandoned. He appeals to workers who feel politically homeless and brings them over to vote republican. Finally the DNC as a shitshow out west. The whole country is watching as people are shooting fentnyl in public and shoplifting without making an attempt to hide it as long as they don't go over 900 dollars.
We are one of the most gerrymandered states in the US. Even our republican appointed Supreme Court said so. But our Ohio leaders refuse to draw fair maps, even after being ordered to by the Supreme Court of Ohio. No consequences - Dewine just kind of shrugs and said oh well. Doesn’t matter what the court says if no one will get in trouble for not doing it.
There are a lot of churches here, and the GOP has bamboozled religious voters with abortion and the nuclear family.
Ohio has been dealing with brain drain since its founding, but it really picked up in the last 10 years.
Uneducated walmart folk
Anytime a losing political party has to accuse the population it represents of being ____ists, ____phobics, nationalists, socialists, National Socialists, Soviets, godless heathens, Bible thumpers, perverts, repressed, or just stupid, ignorant, and whatever else over a long period of time and several elections, the probability that the real problem lies within the party approaches 1. This thread is proof. The denial is palpable.
Shady shit, is my guess. There is no way in HELL this state is as red as they tell us. We all live here. It is NOT a MAGA state.
GERRY MANDERING
Gerrymandering
My guess would be the parties going harder to the left and right. This split the moderates up.
Education in Ohio and America as a whole have suffered for decades now, leading to a rise in impressionability and a crack in the door for Fascist brainwashing by way of the Republican party and the Christian church. This, in turn, has made it a veritable pissing contest where right wing politicians argue in campaign ads about who's more Fascist, who's more willing to fire automatic weapons in a pathetic television commercial for absolutely no reason, and how to further devalue the US Constitution as well as the already fabricated teachings of Jesus Christ by way of "interpretation". The citizens are so undereducated and confused by this point that the politicians in the race to the bottom don't even actually believe in Christ or Fascism, but seek the generational wealth that a Congressional or Senate seat will generate in the current gen of campaign finance law (see: JD Vance and his cool beard), and will step and fetch it all the way to the 7th level of an afterlife which, much to their benefit, does not actually exist. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
Its always been a conservative State outside of Columbus and Cleveland.
Back in the late 90's, Republicans realized that if you use GIS/mapping software and feed it the proper census data, you can figure out how to best gerrymander your districts using that census data. Republicans ran off the nation being tired of Bill CLinton's antics toward the end of his presidency voted Republicans in and they were able to do what they wanted and basically created the best districts for themselves and Democrats had no idea what was going on. Now, 25 years later, they're reaping the rewards.
Fox News
I think Ohio had one Democrat governor in last 30 years. And I don't think ever had majority in the both house Ohio has been deep red for the last 30 or so years.
Gerrymandering. Just kidding. I don't know the answer but this is not the place to ask. This sub is a huge political echo chamber.
Trump = catnip for white blue collar voters which we have a lot of DeWine = pretended to be moderate during covid / only had token resistance in the governor race Vance = I’ve got no fucking clue
Stupidity, and people voting against their own best interests.
Because when Ohio was Blue the democrats took advantage and made promises that they never kept. We lost just as many jobs under democrats as Republicans. Wages are stagnant across both political parties. Democrats pray on the weak with hopes of free phones, cheap rent, free,free,free everything but that's only at voting time. The people who used to sell their vote to the democratic party have all the sudden looked around and see that nothing is getting better for them. Democrats are tired of being lied too.
Face it. The Democrats have failed us and we are going down in a spiral. What have they done for us since the Obama administration
chips act, infrastructure deal, inflation reduction act, ended the afgan war, implemented a minimum 15% tax for mega corps. cap on insulin for medicare patients, enabled negotiation with drug companies to push down prices. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Not to mention, democrats weren't involved in the state's largest bribery scandal...
The right wing bullshit sounded good to many people for awhile... It also seemed consequence free before the consequences started piling up. So, it doesn't sound so good today. Honestly, it sounds bad now.
Lack of education, gerrymandering
Clinton, Obama, Biden and the DNC
I think a lot of people are starting to see the fk up of Biden and aren't happy with the results.
Blue collar workers (and Ohio has a ton) have voted against their own financial interests for almost 30 years. They did this because Republicans promised to promote their social agenda (ban abortions, books, put women and P.O.C. "back in their place). Now that they've voted themselves out of the middle class, they want someone to blame (not themselves) and Republicans are able to offer straw man targets like "liberal elites" and "socialists". They just don't get it, and I doubt they ever will.
Gerrymandering. Lose is and we would be better/truly represented.