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Originally Posted by mrnyc
not a great mystery, just like traditionally hardcore repub texas' swing to purple isn't either, more like long simmering and in ohio given extremely low immigration overall -- see my post above.
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I actually think it is a bit of a mystery why Ohio has gone so red in the past ~8 years. Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012. It has similar demographics to neighboring Michigan and Pennsylvania. The state is getting blacker (14% in 2019 vs 12% in 2010), and while Hispanics and Asians represent a fairly negligible slice of the vote, their numbers and percent of the population have also been increasing.
I get that the white working class has basically all jumped ship from the Democratic Party, but does Ohio really have that many more people in that category than Michigan and Pennsylvania?
I think the utterly absurd gerrymandering at the state level has really beaten down the Democrats in Ohio. Thankfully voters passed gerrymandering reform, and the districts will be redrawn in 2021 (I think), which should result in a couple Democratic pickups in the House and throughout the state senate and house. But largely, the total lack of opportunity for democrats to even compete in races has really eliminated the grassroots network that proves critical for organizing, registering voters, getting voters to turn out-- all the stuff Stacey Abrams was able to do in Georgia.
The other explanation I would posit is that Ohio has a significant slice of Appalachia in it, including urban Appalachians who migrated in large numbers from West Virginia and Kentucky to Cincinnati and Columbus. Pennsylvania, of course, has this population as well. But Ohio doesn't have a mega city like Philly to balance it out. If Philly was roughly equal in size to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania would probably be a reliably red state now, too. Given the way Columbus is growing, maybe it will eventually become large enough to shift state-wide elections, but right now there just aren't enough votes in the urban counties to off-set the massive amounts of R votes coming from the rural (yet still fairly populated) and suburban counties.