The Ohio Vote in November

http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4898
Date Written:  2017-03-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21537

Donald Trump won Ohio because the total Democratic vote declined more than the drop in the total two-party vote, and significantly more than the Republican increase.

Abstract: 
-

Excerpt:

To examine the Ohio vote a little more deeply, we will look at four of Ohio's Rust Belt counties along Lake Erie stretching from Cleveland to Toledo, both of which, like most cities, went Democratic in both 2012 and 2016.

These four counties, Lorain, Erie, Sandusky and Ottawa, all went for Obama in 2012 by a total of 124,330 to 98,564. In 2016 this vote was somewhat reversed, with Trump getting 113,081 votes to Clinton's 98,789. Again, the two-party vote dropped by 11,024, while the loss of 25,541 from the Democratic column was larger than the shift of 14,517 to Trump and larger than his margin of victory in these four counties.

Presumably the story is similar in other blue collar counties such as those in northeast Ohio, home to Youngstown and the legendary GM Lordstown plants. What seems clear about these deindustrialized blue collar counties is that disillusioned Democrats and demoralized labor leaders forced to "sell" Clinton, the establishment neoliberal, could not prevent either the drop in Democratic voters or the shift to Trump, even though the latter was relatively small.