In an earlier post, I made a prediction about the midterm election in Ohio. Today, I looked for recent polling data, to see if there is any relevant information that might lead me to update my prediction. There isn't much.
There are some polls about the Senate race and the governor's race in Ohio. In both, there is a sense that the Democratic candidate has a small lead in polls, but around the size of the margin of error. I could not find any data on most of the Congressional races, though there are a couple of polls since the special election in August about the 12th district. That seems like a close race, based on the polls, but FiveThirtyEight still rates it as lean Republican, based on historical data for the district.
I also did not find any data on expected voter turnout or early voting trends in Ohio. Maybe I'm the only one interested. After all, the statewide races in Ohio have drawn some national interest, as Ohio is still considered a bellwether state in national elections, and having a Democratic governor in the next presidential election gives the Democratic candidate a small advantage over having a Republican governor. But, with the possible exception of the 12th district this time, the results of the congressional elections in Ohio are hardly in doubt. It would take a substantial blue wave to overcome the gerrymandering here. The current national generic congressional polls show an advantage for Democrats of 7%, which is not enough to overcome the built-in advantage of Republicans in any of their 12 majority districts.
That is that state of democracy in Ohio. A 7% shift over baseline may help elect a Democrat for governor, and an incumbent Democratic senator may easily win re-election, but Congress won't be affected. Democrats would need another 3 or 4 percent shift to win more of those races, except in the one "open" seat. My question was whether Ohio was in line with the rest of the country in the generic congressional ballot polls in the size of the shift. I could not find any data to tell me.
So I will stick with my original prediction. Democrats will win some of the statewide races, maybe a lot of them, and will get more votes than Republicans for congressional seats in total, but will still only win four (or maybe five) seats out of sixteen.
What happens to Ohio and the country after that, I feel unable to predict. We have a president who appears to be using the military for political theater, and who has told some astounding recent lies about tax cuts and the elimination of birthright citizenship in what seems to be a desperate attempt to stave off substantial losses for Republicans in Congress, and some of his followers are believing him. He has also said there would be violence in Democrats won. And now, nationally, it looks likely Democrats will win enough seats in the House to take control. I cannot predict the response of this childish president or the worst of his followers, but I worry about it. How will he deal with the label of loser?
I did find some data on early voting in Ohio, which is not so remarkable as in many other states. There is a list of states with more early voting to date than was seen in the last midterm election, and some, including Texas, which have had more early votes than the final totals in 2014. Not Ohio. As of 30 October, Ohio has had maybe a hundred thousand fewer early votes than in 2014, which I think puts it ahead of the same time before the election last time, but only by a little. There may be some increase in early votes and total voter turnout compared to recent midterm elections, but there does not appear to be the same excitement in Ohio as in many states.
Maybe that is because the senate race is not very close and will not mean a change. The governor's race doesn't seem to be generating a lot of excitement, either. I don't know why. I think Richard Cordray is a very capable man, and will make a very good governor. I do not have the same thoughts about Mike DeWine, who holds rather unappetizing views. As a senator, he supported a Flag Protection Amendment to the Constitution, which is essentially a welfare bill for trial lawyers, and would end up wasting a lot of federal court time over arguments of how red red is, and exactly what number and width of strips of cloth must be protected. Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question. We are all better off for Senator DeWine's failure to get that bill passed. His views on other issues are equally ill-conceived, in my experience. I think he should retire from public life, and let more thoughtful people take over.
But the voters of Ohio don't seem to care very much, compared to the counterparts in other states. We'll see what the final tally is. There has not been an update on the early vote numbers since last Tuesday, so there may be a substantial increase in early voting by the time all the votes are in. After all, absentee ballots can be counted if post-marked on the day of the election, so they could be arriving in numbers for a few more days. But the number requested is only a modest increase from 2014.
What would it take to get Ohio voters excited? I'm not sure I want to know. I have seen some of what Ohio voters choose, and sometimes, I just shake my head in wonder. What I'd really like to know is how to excite those who would vote like me without disturbing the others, leaving them to sit quietly at home while my co-believers made our statements and tried to make the world better. I am not a political scientist nor an activist, however, so I just think about how nice it could be, and wait for the actual election results.
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