The Independent Voter in Ohio

Self | 10/3/2016 | LS

[LS]

Here are some numbers from Montgomery County, OH, a key OH county won by Democrats for the past four elections, if only narrowly. First some caveats: this is today, and things can change. They did in 2014, when the Rs built up a big lead, then lost it for the rest of the election. But more important, Ohio law says that anyone who does not vote in primary is tossed into the “unaffiliated/independent” classification. 2012

R 13,356

D 12,630

I 9,622

2016

R 17,465

D 14,156

I 4,528

This is in large part why some of us—me in particular—were not reading the 2012 early votes correctly: the “Is” were not truly independents but were instead lazy Democrats. They just hadn't voted in the primary. In the general election, rather than going 55-45 to Romney as most polls predicted would happen with independents, they went 66-33 for Obama.

A colleague with access to precinct maps and intimate knowledge of specific households in many cases was able to “normalize” these 2016 numbers in terms of whether the household voted R or D. Notice the near 50% fall off in independents from 2012 to 2016! When “assigned” by how the household previously voted, we are left with a maximum of 4,528 “Is”. Assuming even one-third of those are still actually Democrats, the Rs have a sizeable lead at this point.

Both Ds and Rs gained—but Rs gained about 4,100 while Ds only gained 2,500. Most of these came from the “I” category.

What are the implications? Assuming that the “normalization” was accurate (and I have no reason to believe it was not), former “independents" have moved sharply to Rs, gaining not quite double that of the Ds. A reasonable assumption is that after “normalization,” interest in Rs is up significantly. If this is symbolic of what is happening all across Ohio—and don’t forget that in the bluest of counties, Cuyahoga (Cleveland) the Democrats lost 114,592 since 2012 while Rs gained 27,060. Even allowing that a large portion of the “lost” Democrats ended up in the “Independent” category, they still ended up losing a ton of voters. But we’ve been over that.

What this shows is that rather than “breaking” 2:1 D, the independent vote is going about 60/40 R. And that might be why there are rumors Cankles is actually abandoning OH.

[HarleyLady27]

BTW: When it was announced that ROTTEN left Ohio, she didn’t...she still has people there, they want the Trump Supporters to think it’s safe, it isn’t...pretend Trump is loosing (losing) to make sure he wins!!!

[11th_VA]

As close as I live to PA, I don’t understand why they vote for RATs - especially with The threat Hillary is to 2A.

[Principled]

Pennsylvania. I want Pennsylvania.