About a week after President Joe Biden stepped down and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, her campaign announced 25 events in ten states. Ohio was not on the list. This is a clear sign that Harris’ team expects Donald Trump to win the state, as he did in 2020 and 2016. Various polls at the time showed Trump leading by about ten percentage points.
However, the same polls showed Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown leading Trump-backed Republican challenger Bernie Moreno by four to five percentage points.
The term “red state” – which means “reliably Republican” – is most often used in connection with presidential elections. But that’s the view from 30,000 feet up. On the ground, it’s more complicated.
What do the voter affiliation data show?
Ohio does not require voters to declare party affiliation when registering to vote. Instead, Ohio’s Secretary of State, who oversees elections, determines party affiliation data retrospectively, primarily from vote totals from the previous two years’ primary elections. (This data is anonymous. No one in state or county government can see your votes.)
According to figures published in May, there are:
• 817,063 Democratic voters
• 1,508,641 Republican voters
But those two numbers are dwarfed by the number of “non-partisan” voters, those who did not vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries in the previous two elections: 5,734,850. Were they unhappy with how they voted in the primaries? Were they simply not interested in politics at the time? (The Ohio primaries are in March.) It’s hard to say.
In 2021, there were even more unaffiliated voters (6,196,547), and there were more Democrats than Republicans (947,027 to 836,080).
But in both years, the numbers were influenced by the parties themselves. In 2020, the Democrats had a hard-fought primary that Biden ultimately won, and Trump had virtually no opponent. In 2024, the opposite was true.
But nothing illustrates the complexity of Ohio voters’ views better than referendums.
When issues are up for vote
In Ohio, citizens can bypass the state legislature and give all voters the opportunity to amend the state constitution or enact or repeal a law. These are commonly known as ballot initiatives. It’s a complicated process, and in 2023, Republicans tried to make it even more difficult, apparently because they knew voters are much less reliably “red” when issues are on the ballot instead of candidates.
Indeed, later that year, Ohio voters passed two bills—a constitutional amendment guaranteeing reproductive rights, including abortion, and a new law legalizing recreational marijuana use—that faced strong opposition from the entire Ohio Republican Party and many of its allies.
These results nearly matched the results of a 2022 poll of Ohio voters conducted by Baldwin Wallace University’s Community Research Institute. The results of that poll showed that voters are out of step with Republicans, who win most statewide elections and control the legislature.
About the results:
• Abortion: 59% of voters said they would amend the Ohio Constitution to make access to abortion a fundamental right. (And they did.)
• Recreational marijuana: 58% said recreational marijuana use should be legalized. (And did.)
• Gun control: Majorities across all demographic groups, including conservatives and gun owners, supported additional restrictions on guns, including background checks.
• Teaching racism and sexual orientation: Three-quarters of Ohioans surveyed supported teaching public school students both the history and impact of racism, while 57% supported teaching middle and high school students about sexual orientation.
• Climate change: A majority of respondents supported steps to mitigate the effects of climate change.
🗳️For more information about the elections in November this year, see our “Election Signals 2024” page.
Republicans still dominate the state government
“By the end of Gov. DeWine’s term (in 2027), Republicans will have held the governor’s office for 32 of 36 years” and other statewide elected offices for similar periods, said Kyle Kondik, senior editor of the political newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball and author of “The Bellwether,” a book about Ohio’s historic role in presidential elections.
And in the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate, where the battle is not at the state level but at the constituency level, Republicans have an overwhelming majority (68 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives and 78 percent in the Senate).
Kondik said he believed Republicans would still have the majority if they did not also control the district boundaries, but smaller ones. And he added: “Perhaps with a bipartisan map and a big wave” of Democratic turnout, the Democrats could win a majority in the House, as they did in 2006 and 2018.
What is a “bipartisan ticket?” That’s what the next constitutional amendment Ohioans will vote on is all about.
The addition of “citizens not politicians” is intended to put an end to gerrymandering, the ancient practice of drawing electoral districts to favor one party over another. Both parties have used gerrymandering to their own advantage at different times and in different states. In Ohio today, it is the Republicans who are benefiting from it.
For more information on gerrymandering and the proposed change, see this explainer video from Signal Cleveland.
Governor DeWine recently announced his opposition to the amendment. But Fair Districts Ohio, the organization behind the amendment, collected about 120,000 more signatures than needed and in more counties to get the bill on the ballot. And if the amendment passes, it would not only be another example of Ohio voters challenging the party they keep putting in office, but also of taking away some of that party’s power.
