Why is Ohio so important in the primary process, compared to other major states like New York or California? The commentators keep emphasising how significant it is, but without explaining why?
It’s not that important in terms of number of delegates. But it is supposed to be a better barometer of how a candidate will fare in the general election and how the candidate will play in “middle America”.
It has a history of going for the eventual GOP winner. But I think the main reason its being talked up is that it was the largest “up for grabs” state this Super Tuesday. Santorum and Newt weren’t on the ballot in VA, Mass, VT and Idaho were locks for Romney, OK and ND were locks for Santorum and Newt has been ahead in GA for weeks. That left TN and OH where the outcome was uncertain, so those are the races the media talks about.
Alaska is in some ridiculous time-zone, so by the time their polls close the election will be over and we’ll be gearing up for the 2014 midterm elections.
Ohio has 66 delegates available and the candidates need 1,144 to lock up the nomination. Additionally, no Republican has ever become President without winning the Ohio primary. It’s a bellwether state.
It’s worth 18 electoral votes, which is not insignificant, but mostly it’s important because it’s a swing state, plausible for either candidate to win and a good predictor of victory. It’s hard to put together a winning scenario without it; the Republicans might have to win Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and New Hampshire, for instance, to scrape out a victory without Ohio. It’s not impossible, but it’s tough.
Edit: Whoops. Forgot that this was about primaries. I’ll add that the GOP gives states extra delegates for having voted for McCain in 2008 instead of Obama, which penalizes Ohio. I think it’s a dumb strategy; it tends to benefit candidates who would do well in states the GOP would win anyway in the general and minimizes the chance for a moderate who might actually win.
It’s a swing state, so it has a real chance (but not a given) of voting for the Republican in the general election. Some states are assumed to favor one party or the other, Ohio tends to be up for grabs.
It’s also said to be representative of the US as a whole. Major cities, small towns, farming areas. Cincinnati feels Southern in culture, Cleveland seems more northern rust belt. There’s open farmland like much of the midwest, and Appalachian mountain areas. Columbus is a test market for a lot of restaurant chains because of this. I’m not sure if this still applies as demographics have shifted throughout the US, but it’s still the common thought. My gut is that Ohio’s Latino and Asian populations are not representative, for example, though I think the African American percentage is probably similar to the nation as a whole.
All of the reasons stated, but I tend to think that the primary one is that it was the one state likely to be competitive. If Romney had it in the bag but TN looked close they’d be going on about how important TN was.
Consider that even had Santorum won by 1% last night Romney still would have gotten more delegate and you begin to see how misleading the “breathless” commentary was.
To me the far more interesting results were the Southern ones. I’m still not entirely sure how a GOP candidate wins a general election in 2012 with so little support in the South. NC and VA seem hard gets for Romney if he doesn’t really shore up his evangelical support, and they’re basically mandatory for a win in November.
Romney doesn’t have to worry about the south. Does anyone seriously think Obama will get any electoral votes from any of these: Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, or Tennessee? It doesn’t matter who the Republican nominee is, they will vote for him. In the general election, sure Ohio is important. But with the Republican overreach there in trying to castrate the unions, they may have energized the Democrats enough to rule out any chance of carrying it in November.
Romney damn well has to worry about North Carolina and Virginia. Without those he cannot win. Sure he’ll carry the deep south, there’s no worry about that. But the border states (VA, NC, MO, TN) become much more dodgy if he can’t get that seemingly firm portion of conservative evangelicals out to vote for him.
And if you rule out the Midwest (IA, MI, OH, PA) then how do you win? Even taking NC, VA, CO, NM, IN and NV only gets him to 268.
NC and VA, sure he’s got to worry about. Here’s how I see the map right now. Not a lot of wiggle room for Romney.
Ohio is also the state of my birth, so it’s got that going for it.
Mostly the Buckeye State is important in the general – it’s bigger than you think, and in the top rank, pop wise, of purple states (PA and VA are also up there, but they’re more likely to go blue and red, respectively). So I think its importance in the primary contests is in large part a legacy of the political media being used to talking about it. But it’s still big, and yesterday it was the biggest state on the block.
–Cliffy
Because it’s high in the middle and round on both ends.
A HuffPost article on how big a deal Ohio is for the President:
The 2000 US Presidential election came down to Florida; in 2004, it came down to Ohio. Yes, California has more electoral votes than either of them, but it was clear early on in both elections that CA’s votes would go Democratic. Same thing with Texas for the Republicans.
A good showing in the Ohio primary means the candidate has some actual support there, making it more likely he’ll win in November than if he was just The Guy Who Happened To Get The Nomination.
The media (main stream, lame stream or other) mistakenly equates Ohio’s importance in the November election with its importance in the primaries. Bear in mind that Ohio is less important know than it used to be because if has been losing population (relative to the other states) and thus it has been losing electoral votes. Ohio is down 2 votes, to 18, from 20 votes in 2008. The pundits on Super Tuesday all made much of the fact that no Republican candidate has won the presidency without winning Ohio since whenever, but of course that has exactly nothing to do with how any given GOP candidate does in the GOP Ohio primary. The fact that Romney squeaked by in the primary has little to do with how he’ll do in Ohio against Obama in the fall.
I think it’s possible.
What, you mean, it’s possible for the Republican nominee to take Ohio in November? How and why?
It’s possible for Obama to win Georgia and maybe even Texas, is I think what LOUNE meant. Which is actually true. But of course, any realistic scenario where he wins either of those two states is a scenario where he didn’t need to, because there are more than enough purple states that he’d win first.
Ohio is important because it’s so damn fickle! We’ve got rural, suburban, and urban. We’ve got Bible belt and rust belt. We’ve got ethnic diversity. And we change our minds. A lot.
So kinda like Mitt then?