Why Isn’t Ohio a Swing State Anymore? 

Ohio used to be considered THE bellwether state in Presidential elections. In fact, this was the case for roughly 50 years until 2020. If you  have not noticed,  we are drowning in political ads for the Sherrod Brown versus Bernie Moreno U.S. Senate race – one of the top races for both Democrat and Republican political arms. But where are all the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris ads? The truth is, love it or hate it, Ohio is no longer a swing state. So those presidential ads are sparser now than in the past.  

A quick aside – Ohio offers 17 electoral votes. An easy rule of thumb is a state has as many electoral votes as it has members of Congress (U.S. House Reps + two U.S. Senators) representing it. Congressional House seats are allocated to each state by population and adjust every 10 years based on the Census. Due to population changes in the 2020 census, Ohio lost a seat and went from 16 to 15 Congressional districts. Sometimes this is due to population loss over that 10-year period since the last census. In Ohio’s case, the state’s population growth remained flat while other states outgrew us. 

But while Ohio’s population showed stagnation, that is not a clear picture of demographic swings that have contributed to the state’s political shift . The historically deep blue regions around Cleveland and Cincinnati had been shrinking for decades. Moreover, historically deep blue bastions in Appalachia rooted in strong Union Labor ties have overwhelmingly flipped red due to enormous support for Donald Trump within those groups. This trend emerged in 2016, continued in 2020, and has sustained if not grown heading into the 2024 election. Donald Trump won Ohio by 8% in 2016, and slightly expanded that win margin in 2020. Democrat Sherrod Brown’s first election to the U.S. Senate in 2006 against Republican Mike DeWine saw him win all but one county in Southeast and Eastern Ohio. Now, all those counties have flipped in recent elections . For a similar change, one needs only to look across the Ohio River at  West Virginia to see what used to be a deep union blue state which has  now one of the reddest states in the country.  

The big question is this: Without Donald Trump at the top of the ticket or leading the Republican party, does Ohio stay red? We will leave that for 2028. In the meantime, enjoy knowing our friends in the actual seven swing states this cycle – Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan – are the ones taking the bulk of presidential ads.