President Trump won Ohio over Democratic nominee Joe Biden, according to Fox News, scoring a victory critical to his prospects for winning a second term.
Trump was receiving 53.5% of the vote and led Biden by approximately 8 percentage points, with most precincts reporting a comfortable margin that recalled the president’s victory in Ohio four years ago. The Midwestern battleground was considered crucial to Trump’s path to 270 Electoral College votes. Winning there ensured a reelection victory was still within reach.
Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton 51.3% to 43.2%. That led to predictions that the trending red state would be a second-tier battleground in 2020. It did not turn out that way. Polls down the stretch showed the president locked in a close-quarters brawl with Biden for Ohio’s 18 Electoral College votes, with the state appearing to revert to its historical role as a prominent swing state before Trump put away Biden on election night.
With the polls close, Trump and his top supporters stumped for votes there several times, while his campaign invested significantly on television advertising. Biden took a more cautious approach, visiting Ohio sporadically and only running ads there down the stretch of the campaign after he had amassed a significant cash advantage over Trump, whose resources were depleted toward Election Day.
Ohio has typically been the key to both major political parties’ White House prospects, a bellwether on which candidate would win. True to form, the race between Trump and Biden was essentially tied less than a week before Election Day, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys.
But with a healthy population of blue-collar voters, as well as suburban voters who are a bit more conservative than their contemporaries in other states, the state has proven more hospitable to Republicans recently.
In the midterm elections in 2018, as Democrats were sweeping to victories elsewhere, the GOP retained control of the governor’s mansion in Ohio and most statewide constitutional offices. And although Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown was easily reelected, Republicans avoided the kind of losses in House races that afflicted the party in other battleground states, including Iowa.
However, it was precisely because Trump was struggling in Ohio versus Biden despite these built-in advantages that Republicans grew so concerned about the state of the presidential contest all the way back in the summer.
