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The Ohio GOP lost big on Issue 1. These maps show just how much better progressives did and where [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-08-10  

Ohio voters delivered a strong victory for democracy and abortion rights on Tuesday by rejecting the GOP's Issue 1 ballot measure by a 57-43 landslide, as illustrated on the map on the left at the top of this story (click here for a larger version). While Ohio has become a distinctly red state during the Donald Trump era and backed him 53-45 over Joe Biden, the "No" side's margin over "Yes" on Issue 1 was a 22-point improvement over Biden's deficit against Trump, which is mapped on the right above.

Issue 1 would have made it harder for voters to pass future constitutional amendments by requiring 60% voter support instead of a simple majority and adding burdensome new voter signature requirements for even getting onto the ballot. While it did not directly address abortion, multiple top Republicans declared that their real goal with Issue 1 was to thwart an abortion rights amendment that will be on the ballot in November and a potential measure to end their gerrymanders next year.

The results illustrates how a substantial minority of right-leaning Ohio voters are still open to supporting progressive policies such as abortion rights when they aren't tied to individual candidates with partisan labels. While Biden won just 7 of Ohio's 88 counties, almost all of which are major urban areas, the "No" side improved on his performance in every county and carried 22 counties in total, which contained two-thirds of voters.

The 15 counties that flipped from Trump to "No" include a mix of well-educated and high-income suburban areas that have long been GOP-leaning but have trended Democratic in the Trump era, including Delaware just north of Columbus and Geauga east of Cleveland. But several former Democratic stronghold counties that have moved sharply rightward in recent years thanks to a large proportion of working-class white voters, such as Mahoning County in the Youngstown area, also voted against Issue 1.

However, the difference between support for "No" and Biden varied widely throughout the state. It ranged from just a 3-point improvement on Biden's deficit in Putnam County in rural northwestern Ohio, which the University of Virginia's Kyle Kondik noted is one of Ohio's most heavily Catholic areas, to a 34 point overperformance in Belmont County in Appalachian eastern Ohio. While Biden lost both rural counties by a wide margin, western Ohio has long been more heavily Republican than eastern Ohio, which only became a GOP stronghold in the last decade, a trend that Trump heavily accelerated.

In general, "No" outran Biden the most in rural and small-town eastern Ohio, along with the suburbs of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, which are the state's biggest three metropolitan areas. Support for "No" was closest to Biden's support in rural parts of northwestern and southwestern Ohio.

Turnout was relatively high considering Republicans placed Issue 1 on the ballot by itself in an August special election in hopes that summer turnout in an odd-numbered year would be in the single digits and disproportionately GOP-leaning. That's not what happened, though: Instead, just over 3 million voters showed up for a preliminary turnout rate of 32% of eligible voters―a rate just shy of the 34% who voted in the November 2014 midterm election. Even compared to the historically high-turnout of the 2022 midterms, when 47% of eligible voters showed up, Tuesday's turnout represents 73% of last November's total.

Kondik and his colleague J. Miles Coleman also looked at the turnout levels by county compared to 2022 and found that eastern and southern Ohio had lower turnout compared to the big three metropolitan areas and parts of rural northern and western Ohio. Kondik also highlighted another notable trend: Some of the counties in rural southeastern Ohio with the lowest turnout rates are located in TV media markets that predominantly cover parts of West Virginia, suggesting campaigns may have eschewed heavily advertising there just to reach viewers who mostly couldn't vote in Ohio.

Because Issue 1's opponents had one important advantage—a lack of partisan labels in a red-leaning state—that Democratic candidates won't in 2024, its implications aren't clear cut for Sen. Sherrod Brown's potential path to victory next year in what is likely to be a tough race. However, when combined with recent trends in partisan contests, Issue 1's results suggest that Brown winning a fourth term may require finally flipping historically red suburban counties like Delaware and minimizing further losses in heavily white working-class areas in eastern Ohio rather than a true resurgence there.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/10/2186239/-The-Ohio-GOP-lost-big-on-Issue-1-These-maps-show-just-how-much-better-progressives-did-and-where

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