Is Ohio becoming the next Missouri?

[NOVA Green]

No....  both parties support has fluctuated between 46 % and 52% for the past five elections, starting in 2000.

Sure, Trump performed about 1% better as a Republican than George W. in '04, for the strongest performance a Republican has garnered since 1988.

What is clear is that Obama was especially popular for a Democratic Presidential Candidate in Ohio, achieving the highest % of support for a Democrat since 1964--- with a whopping 51.5% of the Vote....

I don't believe that the traditional swing voters of Ohio suddenly decided to become Republicans in 2016 in any massive numbers...

Trump's economic populist message resonated better than some other 'Pub candidates, but unless the dude delivers some goods, he's not going to get love from the 'hood.

Ohio's a very interesting state politically, as I learned living there for four years back in the Mid '90s, with arguably five or six distinct sub-regions, each with their own media markets and collective cultural and social identity.

Now, the problem for the Democrats is that the swing in most of these distinct regions favored the Republican candidate in '16, and this could potentially foreshadow Ohio returning back to a Lean Republican State, as it used to be for quite a few decades....

However, despite the Republican '16 swings in several key regions of the state, we have yet to see evidence of a sustained trend among these key swing voting regions of the State towards the Republican Party at a Presidential level.

An attempt to analyze the political geography of Ohio from a longer term historical timeline, for example starting in 1988 (Post Reagan landslide) might be in order, but as part of a rigorous effort that most precisely breaks the state down into it's key sub-components and looks at the compare-contrast and historical and demographic trending...

Still, even if Ohio is starting to Lean Republican (again!), which is debatable at this time, it certainly isn't anywhere close to become the next Missourri, simply because Trump garnered 1% more than of the vote than George W in '04, who came close to losing the state to John Kerry!

Atlas perspective break folks, and do we have any volunteers to undertake a scientific analysis of the "Six States of Ohio" over the past 28 years?   Gives you eight years of election data to work with, so could be a fun project for anyone interested....   

[NOVA Green]

People are acting like Ohio just became Republican leaning this year because these legions of former "WWC" Democrats have now become the bedrock of the state GOP, LOL.  Ohio has had a Republican lean for some time, only to be overcome by high turnout Presidential elections (in which it was still at the very best a swing state).  It has been more Republican than Democratic for a very long time.

This: Quoted for truth...

That being said, Obama's support levels in '08, and even more significantly in '12 are particularly noteworthy because of the massive deviation from the norm in both elections.

Atlas needs to quit thinking about Obama's strong performance in Ohio in '08/'12 as "the norm", but instead view it as a slight deviance from the norm.

Obama's performance does not appear to have been a transferable scenario to HRC running in many ways for the "3rd term of Obama".....

Still, I would not be surprised if Ohio swings back towards the Democratic nominee in 2020. People shouldn't forget that despite the margins, Trump barely captured 52% of voters in the great state of Ohio.

[NOVA Green]

People are acting like Ohio just became Republican leaning this year because these legions of former "WWC" Democrats have now become the bedrock of the state GOP, LOL.  Ohio has had a Republican lean for some time, only to be overcome by high turnout Presidential elections (in which it was still at the very best a swing state).  It has been more Republican than Democratic for a very long time.

This: Quoted for truth...

That being said, Obama's support levels in '08, and even more significantly in '12 are particularly noteworthy because of the massive deviation from the norm in both elections.

Atlas needs to quit thinking about Obama's strong performance in Ohio in '08/'12 as "the norm", but instead view it as a slight deviance from the norm.

Obama's performance does not appear to have been a transferable scenario to HRC running in many ways for the "3rd term of Obama".....

Still, I would not be surprised if Ohio swings back towards the Democratic nominee in 2020. People shouldn't forget that despite the margins, Trump barely captured 52% of voters in the great state of Ohio.

You're forgetting Kerry in '04 too. When considering that AND Obama, kinda hard not to see why that was considered the norm.

Oh no---- I never forgot about Kerry '04.

Sure there was both and swing and trend toward Kerry in '04, but still he lost the state by 2%, slightly lower than his national performance.

Interestingly enough, the biggest swings towards Obama  was in NW Ohio, as well as Metro Columbus, and Hamilton Coounty.

If you look at the biggest swings from '00 to '04 you see Kerry way outperforming Gore mainly in SE and NE Ohio, as well as to a slight extent in Toledo area (NW-OH) and Hamilton County.

The main reason that Kerry lost Ohio, was because of major under-performance in Hamilton County, and getting killed on the margins of neighboring "suburban" counties of Butler and Cleremont, not to mention a lackluster performance in Franklin County (Metro Columbus).

In retrospect, it's actually amazing how well Kerry performed in Ohio, especially in rural parts of the State in places like SE-OH along the Ohio River Valley, which is basically a working river where FDR and the New Deal, built the basic infrastructure of the region to tie agricultural and energy resources  to a key transportation and international Port way downstream once the Ohio River hits the Mississippi River, and the flows another 1,000 Miles downstream.