For obvious reasons, there has been a lot of talk about the perrenial swing state of Ohio. Recently, things have been bleak here for democrats but Bill Clinton did win this state twice (with some help from Ross Perot). Recently,I was looking at the Ohio county by county votes for the last few presidential elections which can be found at
http://www.uselectionatlas.org to see what if anything changed between the Clinton elections to the Gore elections. Some random observations: Democrats' greatest stronghold in Ohio obvious comes from the Cleveland/Akron/Youngstown area and the surrounding counties in the northeastern corner of the state. In recent elections, democratic candidates have also consistently won Franklin (metro Columbus), Montgomery (metro Dayton), Clark (Springfield), Lucas (Metro Toledo), and Athens (the rural home of Ohio U.) Counties. Democrats also consistently take the sparcely populated WV border counties of Jefferson, Belmont, and Monroe. Democrats have never gotten any traction in Republican Cincinnati, even in Hamilton county, home to many minorities and Ohio's second largest university. The cornfield country of rural western and central Ohio is also consistantly Republican. When Clinton won Ohio in 1996 and 1992, he got some help from Ross Perot but managed to win several counties that voted Bush in 2000. These include almost all of eastern Ohio, several northeastern counties (Seneca, Huron, Sandusky, Wood) and a group of South Central Ohio counties (Lawrence, Scioto, Pike, Meigs, and several others). Does anyone have any thoughts about the demographic/economic makeup of these areas and if/how the 2004 dem candidate can get traction there? Interested in your thoughts.