Is Ohio becoming the next Missouri?

[AN63093]

What do you mean by the "next Missouri?"

If you just mean "former bellwether that is trending R," then sure, that's not only possible, but I would argue likely.  Interestingly, MO is still trending R too (moreso in '16 than '12, which was more than '08 before it), which suggests even it hasn't maxed out yet.

If you mean that OH will get anywhere close to the same margins as MO, then I think that's quite a bit less likely.  First, consider that Trump was, if not the perfect candidate for OH, probably the closest thing to it in my lifetime.

Second, while both states are some of the slowest growing states in the US, consider where the growth is.  The Columbus MSA is a fast growing metro with a new economy and anchored by a big 10 school (Ohio St).  OH also is more urban in general, with both the Cincinnati MSA (very slowly growing, and more R leaning, but still growing nonetheless and D in the urban core), and the Cleveland MSA (shrinking, but still the 32nd largest MSA in the US).  Not to mention there are a slew of other smaller metro areas, like Dayton (these are all shrinking, but added together they are still a sizeable sum, at least for now).

Compare to MO.  MO has a top 20 MSA in St Louis, but it is hanging on for dear life to keep from shrinking (its growth rate now is 0.69%).  The city itself is shrinking- at a slower rate than in the past, but still shrinking nonetheless, which tells me that the MSA still has a ways to fall- there is not enough millennial hipster types moving in that will balance out the aging Boomers in St Louis County (which is also shrinking, by the way).  Now compare to Columbus, which in the city proper has been hitting double digit growth every decade and is growing faster than other "cooler" cities like NY and Boston.  Columbus is a much more likely candidate for millennials to move to, once they get priced out of larger MSAs, than St Louis is.

MO does have KC, which is growing (much slower than Columbus, but still growing), and as a sidenote- KC is a severely underrated MSA in my opinion.  The city itself is growing at about the same rate as the greater MSA.  However, KC plus St Louis has not been enough to stop the R trend.  

So OH is just in a different place, in my opinion, in that it's more urban and has at least one large MSA (Columbus) that is rapidly growing and is attractive to millennials.  While OH does have MSAs that are shrinking, it's starting out from a much higher point (OH is almost twice as large as MO), and if even just one of its other MSAs can reverse the population decline, then the R trend may plateau.  Cleveland might be a lost cause, but look out for Cincinnati.  Its MSA is barely ticking up, but the city core itself is on pace to reverse a six decade downward trend and looks like it may start gaining again.  It could very well be the case that millennials have "discovered" Cincy.  I was just there the other day, and it has good "roots," so to speak- mature and interesting, walkable neighborhoods, with a "street scene" with the hipster type brunch places and so on (these characteristics probably the biggest thing millennials are looking for), it's centrally located and easy to get to a lot of places, it has light rail in the city center that is sorta puny but at least goes to the places you'd wanna go, it has some significant corporate employers like P&G, Kroger, Macys, GE.  

St Louis has some of these categories too, and don't get me wrong, I like St Louis- the Central West End is one of my favorite neighborhoods in the Mid-West.  But for whatever reason it has not been able to stop the people from leaving (although to be fair, the percentage of which it is declining is slowing... from -12.2% in 2000 to -8.3% in 2010, so maybe there will be a turnaround in the 2020s).