How did Biden not win Ohio? (Columbus, Cleveland: tax, vs, safe)

[KY_Transplant]

Originally Posted by Natural510

That's not true. Ohio has produced Dennis Kucinich, Howard Metzenbaum, Sherrod Brown among others. It's been the most purple state in the country up until recently. Losing many of its best & brightest to the rest of the country, leaving behind the super-religious and lesser-educate (trying to figure out where their factory jobs went) who are more prone to (populist) conspiracy theories and less able to tell truth from fiction.

Thanks for reinforcing my point, Ohio has been purple until recently. I stated that Ohio has had a large Democratic base, but not in the AOC and ultra liberal-left Democrats of today. Ohio’s Democratic base is most like the Sherrod Brown, Jim Traficant and Tim Ryan variety. These types of Democrats are likely socially conservative but more liberal on issues pertaining to labor unions, and a big government that looks out for the working man and woman. When these voters realized their voice was no longer being heard, they jumped into the Trump populist movement, hence why rust belt Ohio, rust belt Western PA, Appalachian Kentucky and West Virginia have largely switched from being solid blue Democrat strongholds to Trump country.

[midwest1]

Originally Posted by Natural510

That's not true. Ohio has produced Dennis Kucinich, Howard Metzenbaum, Sherrod Brown among others. It's been the most purple state in the country up until recently. Losing many of its best & brightest to the rest of the country, leaving behind the super-religious and lesser-educate (trying to figure out where their factory jobs went) who are more prone to (populist) conspiracy theories and less able to tell truth from fiction.

I think you mean to say voters less susceptible to coastal media gaslighting.

[TechieTechie]

Originally Posted by ferraris

Do they want to? Or is it just their best option?

I know a number of people in both camps. I have high school classmates from Toledo who simply aspire to live in warmer weather or in a big city like LA, Philly, or Chicago (strangely, I know nobody who went to NYC). But I also have classmates who would prefer to be here in Ohio, but have left for career reasons.

Another thing I've noticed is that the people who never left Ohio, college educated or not, seem to have a stunted career path. It seems that the people who left for 5, 10, 15 years before returning are able to command higher pay and higher positions than those who remained in Ohio the entire time. Maybe there's some correlation with the people who left and returned being more "ambitious", but I think it's also related to the limited opportunities in Ohio.

This is probably exaggerated in the medium sized metros like Toledo. It's harder to get big time experience in a metro with no major bank, only one significant health system, no big name university, and only a handful of Fortune 500 companies.

I'm one of these folks. Moved away for college and didn't return for a LONG time. I wanted to get the dust off my shoes and hit the big city. The job market, particularly for STEM is just SO much healthier in the cities you mentioned. Plus, the good pay, culture, the food, the water access, yadda yadda. And, 25 or 30 years ago, the cost of living was reasonable. Now, not so much.

I moved back to be closer to family and take advantage of the low COL, in that order. Do I miss living on the coast? Absolutely? Can I do my national job (and get my high Boston STEM salary) living in OH? Yes. Do I like greater Cleveland? Most of the time. Do I regret moving? Sometimes.

The thing that really shocks me is the political climate here. A state will always have less educated, Republican leaning folks in any state (heck, even MA, west of 495, is pretty solidly red).....and I think that's great (and necessary). OH was blue for decades because manufacturing/union folks tended to vote blue...and those jobs are gone and/or many folks no longer around. And now? Without that balance, the more extreme portion of the R party (just compare OH to other states in abortion, covid management, voter suppression, utilities bailout....just the tip of the iceberg) that has engulfed the OH legislature. It's mind.boggling. And, that's a big reason, along with weather, that prevents folks like me from moving back, IMHO (or another reason for college educated to not return post college).


The combination of the two are a big reason for slow erosion to the R over the last 30 years. Now, with more mobile workforce and the political mobilization of suburban women, this may reverse itself...the next decade will be telling.

[TechieTechie]

Originally Posted by midwest1

I think you mean to say voters less susceptible to coastal media gaslighting.

What exactly do you mean by Coastal Media gaslighting?


As a native Ohioan who has literally spent 1/2 their life in the Midwest v Boston, I am very curious.

[aca1]

While I suppose in a way all of these posts can be taken as partial answers to why Ohio voted the way it did since it encompasses individual view points, I think the answer to why it voted Republican this time is in the fact that the Democratic party's priorities have been shifting. The Democratic party of the past was mostly about being pro-union, pro 'working-man' type issues but has increasingly been more about social issues. As late as the 90s Bill Clinton signed a defense of marriage act. This would be unthinkable for Biden to do. A lot of people who used to vote Democrat in Ohio are old factory workers and coal industry people in rural Southern Ohio and industrial north east Ohio. These people supported the Democratic party's economic goals but were always kind of socially conservative. Now that social issues are at the forefront of politics, they have switched sides.

I don't think it was Trump personally who won them, he just represents a kind of beginning counter shift on the Republican's part away from being mainly pro-business and free market to being more focused on conservative social issues. I think a lot of Ohioans will continue to vote Republican for some time even without Trump.

While I hesitate to venture into any sort of personal political debates on this forum as they often turn quite nasty, I would mention that I don't agree with the idea that Ohio did not vote for the wining president this time because it is full of uneducated people - for a few reasons.

First, it just doesn't hold logically for a bellweather state to begin with. If Ohio had been previously blue every time, it would make more sense at least to talk about a brain drain, but it hasn't. Did Ohio in 2008 and 2012 have an influx of educated people to make the state switch from Bush to Obama? And did it have a similar brain drain in 2000 to explain why they voted for Bush after Clinton? It just doesn't hold up.

On a more personal note, having college degrees ranging from history to law to engineering to health has not made me or my family less conservative (although I did not vote for Trump <I was third party>) nor has the lack of college education or having to go to underfunded, underperforming public high schools made disadvantaged inner city minorities any less likely to vote for Democrats. I think correlation has been mistaken for causation in terms of voting, and that other more subtle factors are at play. I suppose if universal free college education becomes a reality, we will see though.

I think the residents of Ohio possess more or less the same amount of intelligence as the residents of any other state, and the answer lies more in the increasing partisan nature of politics. People on both sides are less likely to split or change their party votes when they feel so much is at stake and that a victory of the opposing party spells such doom for America, freedom, their race, the economy, etc. The swing states of today are a battleground of demographics, not ideas.

[rickms55]

I think you mean to say voters less susceptible to coastal media gaslighting

I don't understand what that means.

[Bo]

Originally Posted by rickms55

I don't understand what that means.

I think the post means that the national media that people who lean to the left choose to consume is produced on the coasts, in blue states. Whether the messages coming from that media are gaslighting is in the eye of the beholder.

We probably shouldn't debate that second sentence in a state forum, since it seems like it would be off-topic here.

[costellopresley82]

Ohio has always been fairly conservative, especially in areas where German and Appalachian influences merge such as Cincinnati and the southern part of the state.

However, the biggest reason why Ohio is conservative (IMO) is that it isn't dominated by a single city. Cleveland used to be Ohio's dominant city, but Ohio has gradually transformed into a state of suburbs and mid-sized cities over the past 50 years or so. These areas tend to lean conservative. I think this separates Ohio from states such as Michigan or Illinois. If Cleveland had the influence of a city akin to Detroit or Chicago in this day and age, then Ohio would be more of a Democratic stronghold.

[Natural510]

Politics becoming synonymous with cultural identity in this country is also a major issue, with an “us vs them” staking by media propaganda who pretend to be news outlets deterring people from analyzing all sides of an individual issue and judging accordingly. Instead there is a checklist of stances on issues a person who identifies with a party is supposed take or else they’re “not one of us” and therefore less of an American or person in general.

[ohioaninsc]

Originally Posted by 1watertiger

I also believe we should ban mail in ballots except for a few verifiable exceptions. And we definitely need a valid picture ID and signature for any vote cast. No exceptions!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.was...rt%3f_amp=true

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=3666259

No thank you...I love the idea of not having to spend hours in line casting my vote...I'm glad that I can request a mail in ballot, receive it, research everything that's on on it and cast the ballot and drop it off without having to waste a bunch of time that I don't have...voting should be made easy to do, not hard.