Posted by: CBailey on Monday, December 03, 2012
Ohio's electoral prowess defined
After another election cycle, Ohio again proves its prominence among presidential battleground states. Although Florida can claim the closest race (Obama +0.9), Ohio (Obama +2) was the only other state with an Obama margin of victory that was less than his national margin of victory (3.3 percent). In four years, we can still tout my favorite statistic, that Ohio has voted for the winner in every presidential election since 1960. That's now a 13 election win streak.
Dr. Eric Ostermeier, a professor at the University of Minnesota, has an article on the Smart Politics blog describing Ohio's role in presidential elections over the years and the findings are very interesting. According to Ostermeier, "A Smart Politics review of the 47 presidential election cycles since the birth of the modern two-party system in 1828 finds Ohio leads the nation in both the lowest average victory margin (8.8 points) as well as the largest number (23) and percentage (49 percent) of highly competitive contests decided by less than five points."
To put those findings in perspective, he goes on to say, "Only one other state has compiled victory margins of less than five points at least 40 percent of the time (New Jersey, 20 of 47, 42.6 percent) and only one other has tallied single-digit victory margins in at least 60 percent of presidential elections (Pennsylvania, 29 of 47, 61.7 percent)."
The conclusion: For 184 years, Ohio has consistently been a difference maker in national elections. No other state can make that claim.
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