EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — The drive across the state line between Pennsylvania toward this Columbiana County town is bucolic; hills roll as the passenger drifts west away from the Appalachian Mountains, the farms are tidy, and three stark white crosses brace the state line in a cornfield.
There is no doubt that Columbiana County is going all-in for President Trump on Nov 3. Finding a Joe Biden supporter in this rural, red, working-class county is like finding a needle in a haystack. Trump signage, on the other hand, is epic. People don’t have just one — they have nine, along with at least two flags and a 4-foot-by-8-foot sign on the front porch.
The statewide polls tell a different story than what you see here visually. Currently, Trump holds a narrow advantage of just 0.5 percentage points over Biden in averages of recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.
Listening to voters is equally perplexing. It is not that hard to find a suburban voter going from not voting at all in 2016 to voting for Biden. It is also equally easy to find a blue-collar Hillary Clinton voter who is now voting Trump.
In 2016, Trump won Ohio by more than 8 percentage points, winning 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties, the most since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Nine of those counties voted for Barack Obama four years earlier.
Throughout the state, from the Pennsylvania state line, west toward Indiana, then north over the Michigan state line, visually what is happening here in Columbiana County is spread out in counties everywhere. Rural, exurban, and small towns are filled with an exuberant amount of support for the president.
Suburbs, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. Wealthy ones such as Hudson, suburban Columbus, or surrounding the Cuyahoga National Park have more Biden signs than Clinton ever had, but there are still a fair amount of Trump signs.
A lot of college-educated wealthy suburbs have no signs at all — half of those are stressing over the peer pressure of not getting invited to the block parties if they show support for Trump, and the other half favor Biden but don’t permanently think of themselves as Democrats. They’ll vote for Biden, but that is the peak of their enthusiasm.
In short, Biden has not exactly earned a sign on their well-manicured lawn.
No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, and only two Democrats have ever won the White House without it — Grover Cleveland and John Kennedy nearly 100 years later.
If Trump is winning here election night by 5 points or more, it might be a surprisingly good night for Republicans in tight races across the country.
If Trump is losing here on election night, Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University, says then the Democrats are heading for a wave election night across the country.
To win, Trump basically has to do well along the two “spines” of Ohio. “On the east side of the state, Trump will need strong numbers from the Pennsylvania and West Virginia lines up through Appalachia and Mahoning, Trumbull, and Ashtabula to Lake Erie,” Sracic said.
On the west side of the state, Trump will need to secure votes along the Route 75 corridor between roughly Cincinnati to Toledo.
“The only deep-blue zones left for Democrats in Ohio are the three C’s: Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland,” he said. “Trump would like to steal a percentage of African American voters from Democrats in these cities to counteract the formerly Republican white female voters in the suburbs who have abandoned him.”
Prior to 1923, around 40% of all those who were elected president in the United States were from Ohio. Since Warren Harding’s death in August 1923, however, the Buckeye State has not seen one of its own sit in the Oval Office.
Still, since 1960, when Ohio supported Richard Nixon over Kennedy, no one has been elected president without the support of Ohio’s electoral votes.
“No other state has been as accurate in its choices over the same time period,” said Sracic.
Sracic said the backbone of Trump’s support in Ohio comes from white, working-class, noncollege voters, “They are drawn to Trump because of his opposition to free trade, and they like his less-than-polished way of speaking. Trump also receives support from socially conservative evangelical [southern part of the state] and Catholic [northeastern portion] voters.”
Sracic said throughout the state, many small-business owners also support Trump because of his stance on taxes and deregulation.
“Biden’s support comes from young secular voters, minority voters, highly educated voters, and from women,” Sracic said. “He will do well in urban areas and probably a bit better than expected in some of the wealthier suburbs. Older voters, especially former Democrats who are not comfortable with party’s more progressive elements, may be comfortable supporting Biden, particularly if they are unhappy with Trump’s response to COVID.”
COVID-19 in Ohio has two opposing political effects; among older voters, who fear the virus much more than the young, it may cause them to abandon Trump.
Other voters think the actions taken by governors such as Mike DeWine were an overreaction that cost jobs unnecessarily.
“For those voters, the cure was worse than the disease,” he said. “These were the voters who Trump was talking to when he said, after his recovery, that Americans shouldn’t let the disease dominate their lives.”
Sracic said he will spend election night watching the Mahoning Valley near the Pennsylvania border where, he says, it will tell us whether there is a Democratic wave or not.
“If Valley voters turn against Trump in any great numbers, it will be a sign that he has lost his base,” he said. “If, as I suspect, he retains these blue-collar voters, then we are in for a long night on Nov. 3 and possibly a repeat of 2016.”
