Why Ohio Picks the President

By Kyle Kondik

In their influential 1970 book The Real Majority, political demographers Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg identified the individual they saw as the American “Middle Voter.” This person was a metropolitan “middle-aged, middle-income, middle-educated, Protestant, in a family whose working members work more likely with hands than abstractly with head.” They then drilled down a little deeper: “Middle Voter is a forty-seven-year-old housewife from the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio, whose husband is a ma­chinist.” Scammon and Wattenberg did not actually have a specific person in mind. Their description of Middle Voter was an archetype, but after the book was published, Wattenberg said, “I do not know for sure if the lady exists. But I suspect that if you looked hard enough, you’d find her.” .......Ohio is and always has been reflective of the nation.

While Ohio was the 17th state admitted into the Union, it was in some ways the first state that was “typically American,” as the Great Depression-era Ohio Guide described it. From its founding, Ohio featured “the characteristics and habits” of the nation as it was as a whole..... the northeastern part of the state — was once part of Connecticut. It was largely settled by people from Connecticut and other Northeastern states. Northeast Ohio, even today, votes a lot like Connecticut does. A big part of the central and southwestern parts of the state were reserved for Virginia military veterans. This Virginia Military District was settled by Southerners. The middle of the state was largely settled by people from the Middle Atlantic and other parts of the country......To Read More