What's going on in Ohio and Iowa?

[Suburbia]

White working class voters in Ohio and Iowa are trending Trump because of jobs and free trade. Despite that, they're still voting for Republican Senator Rob Portman, who is the biggest free-trader next to Paul Ryan in the entire Congress. They are probably fed up with the identity politics of the Democrats too; or they just like Trump's message.

Clinton should still campaign in Iowa, she can do well in Dubuque, Clinton, and Des Moines suburbs.

So you saying that Iowa is a better bet for Dems than OH???

I agree that there are many more undecided voters in IA vs OH, that tend to lean more Dem than Rep, but I believe that OH is still more winnable for Clinton *if* she can consolidate Obama voters in places like NorthEast-OH (Excluding Metro Cleveland), Toledo, Dayton, and bring Millennials back to the fold in Columbus and many other college communities throughout the state.

It might. She has to do well in the college towns and cities in Iowa.

[NOVA Green]

White working class voters in Ohio and Iowa are trending Trump because of jobs and free trade. Despite that, they're still voting for Republican Senator Rob Portman, who is the biggest free-trader next to Paul Ryan in the entire Congress. They are probably fed up with the identity politics of the Democrats too; or they just like Trump's message.

Clinton should still campaign in Iowa, she can do well in Dubuque, Clinton, and Des Moines suburbs.

So you saying that Iowa is a better bet for Dems than OH???

I agree that there are many more undecided voters in IA vs OH, that tend to lean more Dem than Rep, but I believe that OH is still more winnable for Clinton *if* she can consolidate Obama voters in places like NorthEast-OH (Excluding Metro Cleveland), Toledo, Dayton, and bring Millennials back to the fold in Columbus and many other college communities throughout the state.

It might. She has to do well in the college towns and cities in Iowa.

There are many more undecided voters in Iowa than Ohio, and many people forget that there is a huge number of college aged voters in the state in both public and private schools...

Ohio is interesting as well in this regard, in that in many former decades it was constantly #3 or #4 in terms of total college enrollment.

Still, I believe IA will flip before OH in '16 although the "Trumpist" campaign platform of foreign non-interventionism, economic protectionism, is essentially tailor made for both states....

[Hilldog]

Ohio is because the DNC e-mails leaked a reference to PA and OH voters as white trash.

[TJ in Oregon]

I'm seeing pro-Trump Facebook posts from people back home I would never have expected to vote Republican. Trump certainly has made inroads with traditionally democratic blue collar whites in Ohio, but not nearly as much in Wisconsin (yet the media keeps citing it as a state Trump is expected to do well in for some strange reason). In recent decades rural working class whites have mostly left the Democratic Party but their urban counterparts had not prior to this year. You can look through the DRA map of Ohio and see across the state red townships and blue cities or even blue villages. It will be interesting to see what the map will look like this year, but it seems, anecdotally at least, that the white poor urban cores are moving toward Trump. What remains to be seen is whether this is a small trend or a dam bursting.

I don't quite understand why Iowa is so pro-Trump, but perhaps it is similar to the effect in Ohio since Iowa also has a lot of smaller white manufacturing towns without as many major cities as Ohio.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm seeing pro-Trump Facebook posts from people back home I would never have expected to vote Republican. Trump certainly has made inroads with traditionally democratic blue collar whites in Ohio, but not nearly as much in Wisconsin (yet the media keeps citing it as a state Trump is expected to do well in for some strange reason). In recent decades rural working class whites have mostly left the Democratic Party but their urban counterparts had not prior to this year. You can look through the DRA map of Ohio and see across the state red townships and blue cities or even blue villages. It will be interesting to see what the map will look like this year, but it seems, anecdotally at least, that the white poor urban cores are moving toward Trump. What remains to be seen is whether this is a small trend or a dam bursting.

I don't quite understand why Iowa is so pro-Trump, but perhaps it is similar to the effect in Ohio since Iowa also has a lot of smaller white manufacturing towns without as many major cities as Ohio.

Very interesting.

[Cruzcrew]

IA is absolutely surreal. If these numbers hold it would be a 10+ points Republican trend. When's the last time a swing State has seen movements like that?

Nevada 2004-2008 is probably the closest recent parallel going from R+1 to D+6

[elcorazon]

WVa?

[Mallow]

IA is absolutely surreal. If these numbers hold it would be a 10+ points Republican trend. When's the last time a swing State has seen movements like that?

MO saw about a 10 point swing (compared to the national average) between 2004 and 2012, and about a 6 point swing between 2008 and 2012. Sorta makes sense that IA would be next.

[Gass3268]

In case anyone is curious, Clinton released her schedule for the week after the debate and she is personally going to an Early Voting Event in Des Moines on Thursday, while they are only sending Bill to Ohio. Clinton camp might see Iowa as more winnable than Ohio.

[NOVA Green]

What is often forgotten about Ohio and Iowa is the large student population in both states.

Iowa ranks at #1 in terms of per capita college students by state.

Although this is distorted a bit because of the presence of Ashford University (Online College) , there is still a very large number of students attending both public and private schools in Iowa.

Ohio is technically just slightly below the national average in per capita college enrollment, but still one of the largest states in terms of total number of college students enrolled in private and public schools within the state.

Ohio has one of the largest public university systems in the nation, as a result of a dramatic expansion of the system in the 1960s where the sons and daughters of factory workers could get a four year degree at an affordable cost (think Kent State).

Additionally, just like Iowa there was a dramatic growth of private schools in the mid to late 1800s, when Liberal Arts schools, theories of higher education, were being developed in a part of the country that basically went from being a frontier state to a settled agricultural and small-town state, with some workshops and factories springing up as the Industrial Revolution kicked off in a big way.

Clinton's biggest dropoff from the Obama '08/'12 coalition has been with Millennial voters, especially younger Millennials (College aged voters).

It's not necessarily that Trump has been able to dramatically expand the Republican base in IA and OH, but also that Clinton has not been able to bring the Millennials onboard in two states with extremely large college student populations.