Ohio Election Results

Well, Donald Trump is President. Didn't see that one coming. However, Ohio went as expected.

For the Presidential race, I thought it would be closer, but Donald Trump did win. Trump won over 52% of the votes, Hillary won about 43.5%, with the other 4.5% or so going to the third party candidates.

The Senate race went as expected, with the Republican incumbent Rob Portman winning in a landslide over the Democrat Ted Strickland.

In the House of Representatives races, 12 districts went Republican while 4 went Democrat. The same distribution as before the election, with the districts staying with the same party.

As far as state legislative elections go, the Republicans cleaned house, winning 2/3rds of the state representative seats and claiming all but 2 of the 16 senate seats up for grabs

This is a perfect example of the effects of gerrymandering. The Presidential race shows the legislatures should have stayed Republican, but not by such a wide margin. The state is much more evenly split than is represented by the legislative bodies make up.

Polls Widen, Clinton Attempts to Rebound

Polls are obviously just polls, but their importance to how candidates campaign cannot be stressed enough. The Trump campaign has spent a lot of time in Ohio recently, and coincidentally, he has seen a bump in the polls in Ohio. Hillary, not so much, but she is pulling out all the stops now. From artist Jay-Z, to Reverend Jesse Jackson, to Hollywood star Mellie Grant, and President Obama; they are putting a vast amount of their resources into Ohio at the moment. The Trump campaign has one of his sons there currently, and his schedule has openings, but it is unclear how much time he will spend there through Tuesday to combat the Clinton Campaigns efforts to reclaim Ohio.

Ohio may be leaning Trump, but this fall has been a very close back and forth. Really, at this point, it is looking like every day, every event, and every bit of news on both of the candidates could send the votes one way or the other. 

Meanwhile, the Republicans still have the senate race locked up, like they have since mid July.

sources:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/oh/ohio_trump_vs_clinton-5634.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/senate/oh/ohio_senate_portman_vs_strickland-5386.html

http://www.ohio.com/news/politics/local/campaigns-rap-preach-and-rally-in-ohio-on-final-days-of-presidential-election-1.723994

Ohio State Overview

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NZfpGjZLcCNeUzI_nYSalsTqIsoXMhOlPkEMQ3QYZZw/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=3000

Ohio GOP Efforts at Voter Suppression could help Donald Trump's Chances of Winning Ohio

            If the Trump campaign did not believe they could win Ohio, then Donald would not be spending so much time there. Ohio has been a critical state throughout this election and it will continue to be a state to watch as the election draws closer. In order for Trump to win, democratic voters would have to stay home and Trump would have to be able to pull the votes from Republicans that are on the fence. There have been times that Ohio voters thought the Democratic candidate would win by a landslide and in turn they don’t show up to vote. This election is different than virtually every other election before. Trump is losing in some historically Republican suburbs.

           

            The southwestern corner of the state of Ohio will be a good indicator of who will end up winning Ohio. This is a key area to watch on election night because there are many voters on the fence. This election is shaping up to be much close than it appeared it was going to be two weeks ago. The resurfacing of more emails and a new investigation is overshadowing the controversial comments from Trump last week. In turn the polls have Trump gaining momentum. Things are looking to be pretty tight in the upcoming week, with Election Day just around the corner, things are far from over.

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/10/the_donald_trump_presidential.html

Gerrymandering in Ohio

With the state of Ohio back in play for Hilary Clinton and the Democrat after Republican Donald Trump's precipitous fall from the top of the polls, many in the Democratic party were hoping to see a gain in seats. Due to extreme gerrymandering, do not hold your breath Democrats.  Richard Gunther who is a professor emeritus at the Ohio State University says that the Buckeye State has a special place in politics, ranking third out of 50 states for worst examples of gerrymandering (Pennsylvania and Virginia are ranked ahead for the dubious distinction). A great stat that shows the ridiculous lines that have been drawn is that "While Republican congressmen received 52 percent of the vote in 2012, Gunther said, they received 75 percent of the seats in the state". Even with high turnout, Democrat voters have little chance of swaying elections already predetermined.

This sad trend is likely to play out across the country and it will only be magnified in the battleground state of Ohio. I find it really interesting that both John Kasich, the GOP governor, and the Republican Secretary of State want to see gerrymandering as a thing of the past. I think that a lack of competitive House races is partially a reason we see such polarized positions in the current political sphere. It will be interesting to see if there will finally be a push to end this practice that belongs in the annals of history.

Something to keep an eye on is if Clinton is able to drive high voter turnout in places like Cleveland and Columbus to win Ohio. If there seems to be a decisive Democratic victory for the presidential race in the state with little change to the House structure, will there be a more public outcry to change redistricting laws? It will also offer more proof for those trying to make that claim there is indeed still systematic racism with practices such as gerrymandering that reduce minority voter power.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/10/23/election-2016--ohio-incumbents-are-shoo-ins-thanks-to-district-maps.html

60 Minutes "Out of Touch" vs. "Far Detached"

            This week I decided to take a different angle at the upcoming presidential election. As I was siting in my living room after the Patriots vs. Steelers games, a 60 minutes special involving the looming election came on the air. The show was overall very unbiased; it showed and interviewed supporters from both sides.  The segment had the goal of figuring out which candidate is more out of touch with reality. The state of Ohio has picked the winner of every election since 1964, and no Republican has won an election without taking Ohio, and this is why Ohio is so influential at this time. The latest poll has Hilary and Trump in a dead heat coming into the final two weeks.

Interestingly they interviewed a couple that had different political views, the wife supported Hilary and the husband a Trump supporter. The husband was a steel worker who lost his job when the mill shut down; he believes that Donald Trump will bring back the jobs to the state of Ohio. In contrast his wife believes that Donald is nothing but talk and she believes that Hilary can bring back the jobs just the same. I found it interested that one of the men stated that Hilary was too far detached from what they are going through in Cleveland, he pointed out that Hilary was wearing clothes that cost more than what he would make in a full years work at the mill when he still had his job. All in all it was a very interesting clip that shows that many people support each candidate for many different reasons, and for right or for wrong, it will make for an interesting race in Ohio.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-ohio-voters-donald-trump-hillary-clinton/

Trump Says He'll Accept Election Results On One Condition

Over the course of the last week or so Trump has been complaining that the election process is rigid against him; and this week he went s step further at the debate and said he will not accept the election results. Now, all of this is a side effect of him being down in the polls and Republicans fleeing his side; he can see the end is near. However, on Thursday at a Trump rally in Delaware Ohio, he took a step back saying he would accept the results on one condition. That condition being if we won; he'd only accept the results if he won.

Really, this news isn't directly anything really important or anything really mind blowing. It's importance comes from how this will affect the legislature races around the country. Everything that Trump is saying and doing is being watched under a microscope, and everything that is being observed is having a very large impact on a lot of those races around this country. All of a sudden Democrats are locking up seats and catching up in the polls in others. He is single handedly destroying the Republican party by dividing the base and sending independents packing. The best example of this is Texas, traditionally the largest Republican state, where he is currently only ahead by a handful of points in a state that Republicans usually win in by a number comfortably in the double digits. It's crazy to think that there is actually a small chance that Texas could vote Democrat this year; and that is something that could have effects one future elections for sure

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/politics/donald-trump-i-will-totally-accept-election-results-if-i-win/

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/tx/texas_trump_vs_clinton-5694.html