For decades, Ohio has been a political bellwether—a quadrennial swing state that often voted for the winning presidential candidate. But in 2016, something odd happened—Ohio jerked sharply to the right, giving now President Trump an eigh-point win despite his two-point national popular vote loss. Some Republicans hoped that Trump’s win was a sign of permanent shift that would allow them to unseat progressive Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2018.
But a new Baldwin Wallace poll is throwing some cold water on those hopes.
Baldwin Wallace found that Brown leads two possible Republican challengers, Jim Renacci and Mike Gibbons, by 12 and 10 points respectively.
Part of the story here is the national environment. President Trump is unpopular (his approval rating is 41 percent nationally, and below 50 percent in the Buckeye State). Senate races are often nationalized, so middling numbers for Trump, combined with Brown’s strengths (he’s an incumbent who ran about three points ahead of Barack Obama in Ohio in 2012 despite having a liberal voting record in a swing state), have helped Brown gain a real edge in this race.
But part of the story may be Trump voters. According to the poll, 13 percent of Trump voters favor Brown. Some of those voters may be the much discussed Obama-voting white working class Democrats that Trump won over in 2016. Ohio is flush with those voters.
This graphic compares the swing from Romney to Trump in the two-party Republican share of the vote to the level of college education among whites on the county level (points size is proportional to total two party votes in each county in 2016). The pattern is simple and strong—Trump gained significant ground in areas with lots of working class whites and a bit of ground in some better-educated counties.
I don’t have detailed results from the Baldwin Wallace poll to back this up, but some of these Obama-Trump voters may be heading back left in 2018. That’s part of the story in special elections: Democrats have been outperforming Clinton’s margin more in areas with large numbers of Obama-Trump voters. And it might hold for Ohio in 2018.
More broadly, it might be worth thinking of these Obama-Trump voters not as reliable Republicans but as possible swing voters. They have, after all, swung from Obama to Trump recently and have reasons to vote for either party (cultural commonality with Republicans and economic agreement with Democrats). So it’s worth watching this group of voters. They could help swing Ohio’s Senate race either way in 2018.
