How Trump led Ohio's red wave
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- NBC4 is digging into the impact of the red wave in Ohio and what it means for the state moving forward.
President-elect Donald Trump easily won Ohio, something that experts said isn’t a surprise. His influence impacted other Ohio races as well, leading to other elected positions staying or switching to Republican.
Trump’s lead in Ohio had an impact on the Senate race, pushing Senate-elect Bernie Moreno to victory as well as dozens of other seats in the Ohio House and Senate.
What surprised the experts was the extent to which most of the counties in Ohio shifted further red. Trump won Ohio by about 11% compared to around 8% in 2016 and 2020.
“That virtually every county, all but two, with the latest bit of data that's come in, went more for Donald Trump and more Republican than in 2020, for instance, is a bit of a surprise, so that includes some of the biggest urban counties in the state, places that are the sort of strongholds for Democrats,” Christopher McKnight Nichols, Ohio State history professor and Woody Hayes Chair in National Security Studies, said.
He said there are multiple takeaways from Tuesday’s election results.
“On the one hand, I think we can look at this election and attempt to generalize 2024 looks like a red wave,” Nichols said. “Ohio looks like it is more solidly Republican than it's been in a long time.”
However, he said while Ohio may be red down the ballot, when it comes to ballot initiatives, such as the vote on women’s reproductive rights last year, there tends to be purple showing through.
“You can tell that the state's actual politics below the surface from those ballot initiatives and referenda is more murky, is perhaps more purple, but when it comes to party affiliations and voting down a ballot, which candidates, which parties are being voted on, there’s no doubt that Ohio is more Republican than ever,” Nichols said.
Dominik Stecula, an assistant professor of communication and political science, said this can be seen in the counties that surround what are usually more blue areas.
“It is interesting to see the almost, like, a realignment with kind of who the Republican base is,” Stecula said. “Places like Youngstown and maybe places around Toledo, that kind of post-industrial places in Ohio and beyond are now going for Republicans,
When it comes to the U.S. Senate seat that was up for grabs here, the experts said country-wide implications played a role.
“It was probably more about an election season that went for Republicans in general in the state of Ohio and the redder states as well,” Nichols said. “You know, I think if you're thinking about what this signals, there's a big picture thing that's going on here, so it's been increasingly rare for states to have one Democrat and one Republican senator.”
All eyes were on Ohio’s Senate race as this seat had the power to flip the upper chamber. Senate-elect Bernie Moreno pulled ahead of incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown and won.
The experts said this was expected as Trump was favored to win Ohio and in order for Brown to hold on to his seat, he would need to convince voters to split their tickets. This didn’t happen to the extent Brown needed; Moreno did win, but by a smaller margin than Turmp, just under 4%.
Stecula said this could mean Brown did succeed in convincing some voters to split the ticket - just not enough.
“The flip happened, I think, primarily because of Donald Trump's performance,” he said. “If Donald Trump's margin was slightly smaller; if he, for example, only was winning by about seven percentage points instead of eight, it's likely that Bernie Moreno would not have won."
Nichols adds it is becoming more common to see states have one solid block of representatives whether that is Republican or Democrat. For example, on Tuesday night every single Ohio Supreme Court justice elected was Republican. The election was the first time Ohio listed a justice candidate’s party affiliation on the ballot.
“It seems pretty clear that having judges' political affiliations on the ballot is an act of transparency for the voters, for sure,” Nichols said. “It's useful in that sense so they know their party affiliation, but it also seems pretty clear that having their party affiliation on the ballot in states that trend hard in one direction, like Ohio now does towards Republicans, means that it's a real uphill battle for Democratic judges to get elected.”