Posted on 10/27/2024 8:05:27 PM PDT by 11th_VA
COLUMBUS, Ohio — With just a little over a week to go until Election Day, Ohio has now seen 1.6 million ballots cast in the 2024 election as of Sunday evening.
Here are three takeaways from the data released by the Ohio Secretary of State's Office about who has already cast their vote across the state.
1. Ohio sees robust Republican strength in the early vote
The most immediate takeaway that is inescapable to avoid when looking at Ohio's early voting data is how much stronger the Republican vote is over Democrats in the state. As of Sunday evening, the Ohio Secretary of State's Office recorded 1,637,003 ballots cast statewide. Of these, just under half (786,422) are by voters who are unaffiliated with either party, meaning they did not vote in a recent party primary. Meanwhile, 503,437 Republican-affiliated voters cast ballots in the state, while 341,046 Democratic-affiliated voters cast ballots.
However, it is still impossible to conclude too much of a substantial nature who would be leading in any of the state's races, as there is no data given about who any of the voters in these three groups cast ballots for. Republican primary voters also routinely have greatly outnumbered Democratic primary voters in the state in all of the state's most recent primary elections. And Democratic candidate support usually winds up being greater in general elections than recent primary participant numbers alone would indicate in the state. Still, if you take only the partisan voters in the state, Republicans make up 59.6% of the early vote, while Democrats make up 40.4%
While no election results can be gleaned from this data, at least one conclusion can be drawn: After Democratic-affiliated voters swamped the early vote in Ohio in 2020, Republican-affiliated voters appeared to overcome their prior aversion to early voting in 2024.
2. Democrats see strength in swing counties and prior northeastern party strongholds.
Although registered Republicans significantly lead the statewide vote over registered Democrats, drilling down county by county reveals a surprising picture: Democrats are leading the vote in most of the state's swing counties, as well as prior Democratic strongholds in the northeastern part of the state that once upon a time made Ohio a swing state on the presidential level.
Democrats are leading the early vote over Republicans in all seven counties that Joe Biden won in 2020. This includes Hamilton, Franklin, Cuyahoga, Lucas, Montgomery, Summit, and Athens counties, six of which make up the state's most populous counties.
However, Democrats are also slightly leading in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, two counties Trump won in 2020, and are practically even with (though slightly behind) Republicans in Lorain County.
Mahoning County is home to Youngstown. Trumbull County is home to Warren, and is immediately north of Mahoning County. Both of these counties, along with Lorain County, a suburban county just outside of Cleveland, overwhelmingly backed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, before voting for Donald Trump in 2020. Only Trumbull County twice supported Donald Trump, while both Mahoning and Lorain County supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by extremely narrow margins in 2016.
This would appear to indicate that even though Democrats are showing more enthusiasm for early voting in the most populous counties across Ohio and in the counties expected to be closest in 2024 for the presidential and Senate races, Republican enthusiasm in more rural and red-leaning counties still manages to overcome this margin.
3. Voters aged 65+ make up almost half the vote
While the Secretary of State's Office does not release much data about voter demographics, the age of voters is one all-important demographic that does get released by the state. And the voters who have shown up so far are substantially older than Ohio's median age of 39.9.
As of Sunday evening, voters over the age of 65 returned 789,085 ballots. Meanwhile, voters under the age of 65 returned 847,918 ballots. This means that 48.2% of voters who have cast ballots so far are over the age of 65, while 51.8% of voters who have cast ballots are under the age of 65.
And polls would indicate that voters over the age of 65 are just about evenly split. A recent New York Times poll of likely electorate indicates that 49% of voters in this age demographic said that they will be supporting Harris, while 48% of these voters said that they will be supporting Trump.
For all the attention that campaigns have gotten over their attempt to court younger voters, the data would indicate that older voters still remain far more reliable voters, a trend that is not unique to this presidential election. However, this focus on campaigns by younger voters is not without good reason.
In the same New York Times poll, voters between the ages of 45-64 said that they will be supporting Trump over Harris by seven percentage points. However, voters between the ages of 30-44 said that they will be supporting Harris over Trump by five percentage points. And voters between the ages of 18-29 said that they will be supporting Harris over Trump by 14 percentage points.
The takeaway from this would appear to indicate that voters under the age of 65 will be the ones to decide this election. Older voters are more evenly split than younger voters, who differ in their views depending on the specific generation they are part of. In short, the more millennials and Gen. Zers who come out to vote over the next week would appear to benefit Harris, while the more Gen. Xers who come out to vote would appear to benefit Trump.
Over 65 people don’t work. Avoid the crowds.
Ditto
Reporters should do videos asking people on the street how many times each of them voted.
Have a Spanish language reporter standing next to the English speaking one.
Voter: “Tres veces”
(”Three times.”)
This thread gives you all the tools you need to analyze early voting data:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4273604/posts
Ohio is going to a big Trump blowout—should carry the Senate race on President Trump’s mega coat-tails.
They will announce Trump will win Ohio by 7:30 pm on Election Day. After the polls close, no surprise there.
For some reason unbeknownst to me, The Cleveland area has been unable to Get Out The Cheat over the last several elections.
Great article !!
Thanks for posting this.
I live in Lorain County along with my wonderful wife of 45 years. I moved here 3 years ago to the day.
We voted at the county elections department building at the south end of Lorain city the third day after early voting started. It was a sunny warm Friday afternoon and there were probably 50 people in front of us when we joined the line, which moved fairly quickly.
Lorain is a 50/50 county, as the gigantic steel mill in Lorain (population 80,000) has not been in operation. This county was once a union labor stronghold, but doesn’t seem to be one now. When Sherrod Brown was in the US House, Lorain was a large part of his district. In the 2022 election, one of the three at-large county commissioner seats went to the GOP nominee by about 500 votes out of 150,000+ cast. Personally, I’m glad I moved to a county where my vote would count.
Just as important as the Bernie Moreno/Brown senate race are two toss-up races for the US House, in the 9th district (the western 133 miles of the Ohio Turnpike including Toledo and Sandusky) and 13th district (centered on Akron). Both are held by female ‘rats: the 9th by Marcy Kaptur, who has served in the house for 42 years (4th longest out of 435); and the 13th by Emilia Sykes, the latest generation of a Black political dynasty in Akron). Emilia lives with her husband in Columbus, even though she claims to own a house in Akron. Emilia is a freshman in the House. Both Kaptur and Sykes are opposed by men who were actually elected to the Ohio legislature, Derek Merrin in the 9th and Kevin Coughlin in the 13th. Here is where the new management of the national GOP could make a big difference. If Trump runs up big enough margins in both districts, the GOP will win both seats in the House. Given that the GOP may lose up to 8 seats between California and New York, these seats could allow Mike Johnson to keep the gavel.
I think that if Trump wins Ohio by 500,000 votes like he did in 2020, Bernie Moreno can’t lose.
That reason is that Ohio next to Florida, has the strictest election integrity laws in America. The Democrats simply can't play their usual games in Ohio and after Florida brought in much improved election integrity laws after the 2000 debacle and after Governor DeSantis fired two very well known Democrat fraudsters heading up Broward and Palm Beach counties, their ability to cheat in Florida was drastically curtailed.
On a completely unrelated note, the Republican share of the vote in Broward county suddenly skyrocketed after Brenda Snipes who was the election chief for that county for years and years was fired. Interesting that.
My conspiracy theory
Progressives always win the mail in vote-cause their cheaters
Their game plan relies on Republicans to vote day of.
Voting early blocks day of voting shenanigans.
I trust this vote early stragey messes up the progressive SOP
I see 20 Trump signs for every harris sign.
I have yet to talk to anyone who is outspoken about supporting harris in ohio. I know they exist. They’re just not vocal about it.
I was hoping someone could explain that for us. Thanks!
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