It does not have the promised land attraction of California. Neither is the glamor of New York. And much less the tourist capacity of Florida. But since the 60s of the last century, there is not a US president who has reached the White House without imposing himself on his rival in Ohio, a state of 11 million inhabitants that mixes rural and urban areas, farms like no other. and post-industrial junk, until it is considered the political thermometer of the nation. John F. Kennedy was the last to achieve the feat, in 1960. Before him, only Franklin D. Roosevelt (1944) and Grover Cleveland (1884 and 1892), the only president elected to two non-consecutive terms, had succeeded. ” As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. The popular proverb has already coined the decisive character of this representative of the so-called rust belt of the American Midwest, to the point that its perfect functioning as a crucible of North American society is also used as a test bed by companies before taking out their consumer products for sale. Only three of the 45 US presidents went without winning in Ohio. Hence, although Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan or Arizona are considered this year as the Swing States in which the Presidency will be played, neither of the two candidates will consider the war lost until they have been formally defeated in the battle of Ohio, where they are they elect 19 electoral votes. Ten less than in disputed Florida, but historically more representative than the US thinks. And what do the polls say about Ohio? Well, although everything is very tight between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the Republican has the victory in sight.The FiveThirtyEight simulation project gives Trump the victory in 50.1% of the cases, compared to 49.9% for Biden. A narrow but sufficient victory, since to win the electoral votes in contention it is enough to achieve a single suffrage at the polls.In addition, the victory in Ohio may be indicative of what happens in the rest of the states of the rust belt, that junkyard and ruined life projects left by the US industrial and war effort to win World War II, to which Bruce Springsteen sang in Youngstown. Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania add up to 64 contested electoral votes. And these are already big words, if you take into account that Florida distributes 29. So if Joe Biden wants to become the 46th president of the United States, and the 15th vice president to occupy the Oval Office, he must prevail in Ohio or break that tradition of more than 50 years that condemns to defeat the candidate who does not manage to win in this land of pioneers first, farmers later and later a workforce of rapid industrialization, today in decline, which has among its most illustrious sons the first man who walked on the moon, Neil Armstrong. Up to seven presidents were born and raised in Ohio, none in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is, along with Virginia, which lit eight, the state that has managed to embody the tenant of the White House the most times. On this occasion, neither Trump nor Biden reached the world in Ohio, the “Great River,” according to the Native American language. But that is where the Presidency is at stake.
