Ohio Splashed With Red in Mid-Term Election

Ohio could be turning Red for a while! Ohio was one of the few states during the Ohio Election that managed to stay predictable during  Mid-term elections. Most of the Country was expected to experience a greater amount of republican votes but Ohio was one of the few states that actually held up this belief

 

Polls showed that there would be a much larger “Red Wave” across the United States. Many republicans and news sources were reporting the same as well. Many Influential Republicans used the term Red Tsunami but that was not what happened on Election day, somehow Democrats managed to hold on to certain key areas. Ohio was not one of these key areas they managed to keep. Senate Republicans were able to grab seats in Ohio.

 

This could be caused by recent inflation and economic concerns.  It’s also not unusual for swing states like Ohio to lean towards the opposite party of whichever party elected president in the previous primary explained Jayne Cherie Strachan the director of The Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at Akron University.

 

 “Presidents almost always lose a substantial number of seats in the midterm elections,” said Cherie-Strachan. “It’s often times seen as a referendum on the president in power. Biden is not particularly popular right now and has low approval ratings. So it would be entirely normal to see, some of those states that, maybe flipped and went for Biden in the presidential election, flipped back in the midterm.”

 

What was surprising however was that Another interesting development was how Ballots were mostly in favor of Womens Reproductive rights.

 

“There were two ballot initiatives that were worded to embed a ban against abortions into the state constitution. And there were three that were written to protect reproductive rights in the Constitution. And they were all decided in ways that supported protecting access to reproductive rights.” Said Cherie-Strachan

 

Ohio Democrat Emilia Sykes was elected U.S Representative for the, newly drawn, 13th Congressional District which represents many areas such as Akron, Kent Warren and Youngstown.  Sykes beat out Republican Nominee Gesiotto Gilbert by 14440 votes or 5.2%

 

In terms of the Governor’s race, Mike DeWine beat out Nan Whaley for the position by a significant amount. DeWine got 62.8% of the votes while Whaley had 37.2%, leaving DeWine in the lead by 25.6%. Experts also expected this result as DeWine had led Ohio through the Covid Pandemic, appearing on TV and live streams throughout.

 

Cherie-Strachan believes that as younger citizens are moving out of the state leaving a much older demographic, this may be transitioning Ohio into more of a solidly red state. Cherie-Strachan believes she may have a good why

“We’ve had some changes in the state’s demographics that make us a little bit more reliably Republican compared to others like Michigan or other former Rust Belt states, one of which is just that the population is getting older, get young. Young people have left the states, left the state for educational opportunities or for work opportunities or, you know, for trendier cities or things like that that aren’t Rust Belt,” said Cherie-Strachan

No matter what the reason may be, changing demographics in the state, recession or a slowly dividing country, it seems that Ohio’s future may be more red than purple.