With Donald Trump carrying Ohio by eight points over Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election, it looked possible that the Buckeye State could permanently fall into the Republican column.
Two years later, Democrats are saying, “Not so fast.”
New polling released on Wednesday shows that Democrats in Ohio are seeing double-digit turnarounds from the president’s margin of victory in 2016.
According to a Suffolk University/Cincinnati Enquirer poll, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown leads his Republican opponent Jim Renacci by a stunning 18 percentage points. That’s a 26-point flip from Trump‘s margin in 2016.
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At the beginning of the election cycle, some GOPers were hoping they could pick off Brown’s Senate seat. Now it looks to be safely in the Democratic column.
The same poll released Wednesday shows Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray – head of the consumer protection bureau under President Obama – leading his Republican opponent Mike DeWine by six points. That’s a 14-point turnaround from Trump‘s margin.
The fact that the top issue for Ohio voters is health care could be the driving force behind the Democratic leads, as Republicans and Donald Trump have spent the past two years working tirelessly to take healthcare from millions and drive up costs and uncertainty in the system.
GOP enthusiasm for Kavanaugh is starting to look overstated
The conventional wisdom throughout the Brett Kavanaugh disaster was that it would help Republican enthusiasm in the final month of the campaign. But the survey released Wednesday shows that just the opposite may be true.
As The Hill pointed out, “The poll’s analysts said the results indicated a lack of GOP voter enthusiasm in the state.”
“[M]idterm voters are in a markedly different mood than they were when Ohio went for Trump in the 2016 presidential election,†said Suffolk University Research Center director David Paleologos. “We could see low turnout among conservatives who see the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, perhaps the most consequential race, trailing by such a wide margin.”
Democrats in Ohio and all across the country aren’t less riled up after the Kavanaugh fiasco; they’re more motivated than ever.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
