In such a large, diverse nation, it is often difficult to identify what really matters to the people. Because of this, traditionally key states have been marked as critical in understanding the American dynamic. Iowa was chosen as the first caucus state before 1968 because the Democratic Party felt that the caucus system may benefit it in analyzing voter sentiment. New Hampshire has long held the first primary in the presidential nomination process for similar reasons. In more recent years, targeted swing states have become the battleground for focus of political polling and massive spending by political parties to determine what policies and plans appeal to the general electorate.
One such state, Ohio, has played a long-standing role in national politics. Seven presidents have been born in Ohio, trailing only Virginia’s eight. The state is now the seventh most populated in the country, and it has always had a mixture of rural and urban voters, making it more representative of the country as a whole.
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Every president to win office between 1960 and 2020 won the state of Ohio. In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon virtually tied in the popular vote, with Nixon carrying Ohio but losing in the Electoral College. Before that nail-biter, you have to go back to 1944, when Thomas Dewey lost in a landslide in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth election victory. In 2020, Joe Biden became the first candidate in decades to win the presidency without carrying Ohio, joining Grover Cleveland, who did it twice, FDR, and JFK as the only Democrats since the Civil War to have done so.
Yet the 2020 election wasn’t totally a surprise in this regard. In recent years, Ohio’s political role as a swing state has diminished: It has transformed from the epitome of a “purple” state, one that voted for Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama twice each, to a state that is solidly “red” and voted by large numbers for Donald Trump both in 2016 and 2020.
This divergence is not easily explained by studying the racial, religious, and educational demographics of the state. “Ohio is older, whiter, and has less education than the rest of the country,” University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven recently claimed. “That’s why it’s redder.” But that doesn’t really hold true. Ohio remains similar in the white percentage of its population to its neighbors Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. That is generally also true of GDP wealth per capita and college education status. Strangely, Ohio is actually significantly younger than those states per capita, which goes against the demographic trend.
Given these factors, what happened? Why is Ohio a recent outlier?
There are many theories, and certainly, there are demographic factors that have come to play a part. For example, there has been a slow, steady shift of white, blue-collar workers away from Democrats over the last generation, while the college-educated bloc has moved toward them. The suggestion that Ohio has become older and whiter is a common argument, but it doesn’t hold up in comparison with neighbor states, as noted above.
With a lack of significant evidence of racial or age divergence, the main factor that remains is this: Ohio, generally, has had extremely competent, centrist Republican leaders for the past 15 years. While the GOP’s history in the years following George W. Bush’s exit from the stage has been tumultuous across the nation — Tea Party activism, opposition to Obamacare, a splintering of the Republican Party consensus following two losses to Obama with John McCain’s and Mitt Romney’s nominations, followed by the rise of Trump and the MAGA faction, etc. — Ohio has largely been led by a centrist state party, for better or worse.
John Kasich succeeded centrist Democrat Ted Strickland as governor in 2011. Kasich was clearly the definition of a centrist. Though he proclaimed to be a Tea Party Republican, he was willing to expand government. This included even unilaterally expanding Ohio’s Medicaid program to participate in Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which he did largely without the support of the state party. He led a government that was in many ways to the left of the national Republican Party, having less-conservative positions on abortion, crime, and spending than most Republicans. As governor, he was legally bound to balance the budget, but Kasich did support tax cuts and control spending.
Kasich was succeeded as governor by Republican Mike DeWine. DeWine has one of the longest political resumes in Ohio history. DeWine began his career as a prosecutor before being elected to the Ohio Senate. He then served as a member of Congress from 1983 until 1991, became lieutenant governor of Ohio under Gov. George Voinovich from 1991 until 1994, was elected to the Senate from 1995 to 2007, and then became the 50th attorney general of Ohio, serving from 2011 to 2019. After being elected to the governorship in 2019, DeWine encountered one of the most complex problems faced by the state in its history: the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, he received high marks from the public for his actions.
None of this is to say that Ohio Republicans were perfect or even all that conservative. Kasich was roundly criticized for the state’s Medicaid spending after the expansion. DeWine was criticized by many on the Right for taking a cautious approach to opening up the economy after the coronavirus pandemic started. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) could also be added to this discussion. A centrist member of the Bush administration, he was a steadfast fiscal conservative who never joined the Trump bandwagon. Over the years, Portman did move to the left on some social issues, such as legalizing marijuana and gay marriage, and ended his senatorial career by criticizing the more extreme parts of the GOP.
This preference for left-of-the-party Republicans has long appeared as an opening for Democrats. In 2012, Obama and long-standing Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) had dreams of turning Ohio deeper purple or blue. Obama’s two victories in the state were a resounding confirmation of Ohio’s status as the paramount swing state. And as recently as this summer, Democrats were making the argument that Ohio was again in play, not only for the Senate race between Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Republican J.D. Vance, who ultimately won by the same margin as Trump did in 2020, but that Democrats could eventually compete statewide and could challenge for Ohio’s electoral slate in 2024. Derrick Clay, the former political director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview earlier this year that Ohio had been a swing state for a long time, and the same trend was visible this time. Though that didn’t work out for the Senate race, Democrats were, in fact, able to hold three critical congressional districts in the state, showing that Ohio is far from homogenously red in political nature.
However, Ohioans seem to appreciate centrist, steadfast leadership, whether perfect or not, and have chosen to reward those leaders. Kasich, DeWine, and Portman easily won reelection time and again. Ohioans showed that they were not looking for perfection in their leadership. They were looking for common sense, stability, and reasonableness. In 2022, DeWine won 85 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Such a mandate comes from popularity and trust.
In turn, that trust has built steady faith in the GOP state party. The Ohio state party is one of the strongest and best run in the country, which could be greatly credited for the state’s more steady Republican flavor in past years than that of other neighboring states. Michigan and Pennsylvania, for example, have been littered with subpar or irresponsible Republicans over the years. Pennsylvania has remained competitive in nationwide elections, with Trump even winning the state narrowly in 2016. At the same time, however, Pennsylvania’s state GOP has created one debacle after another as it has allowed Democrats control of the gubernatorial mansion for 12 years, given up a supermajority to Democrats on the state Supreme Court, and this year likely has also lost its majority in the state House. The elevation of Trump and other MAGA forces that have undermined faith in democracy and elections have further weakened the GOP parties in those states.
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In a piece titled “Competence Not Chaos” in the City Journal following last week’s election, Fred Bauer wrote, “To convince voters that it could govern well if it gained power, the Republican Party has a strong political incentive to lay out a policy vision and to try to enact some of it via legislation. … The 2022 midterms also indicate the limits of disruption. Instability likely increases the appetite for candidates and parties who seem steady.”
Ohio’s transition from a battleground swing state to a dependably Republican stronghold during the past 15 years is symbolic of this evolution. States such as Ohio and Florida are the road maps to establishing large, broad, and sustainable modern conservative coalitions that can govern confidently. It is up to national Republicans to choose whether to accept those lessons and move forward on such a reasonable, thoughtful path.
Pradheep J. Shanker is a radiologist and writer from Ohio.
