United States elections 2020: importance of the state of Ohio in the US elections

The electoral system in the United States makes the result in some specific states almost paramount and, among these, Ohio usually takes the cake. Although Florida may be more decisive, no state is usually as representative of the final result in the country as this northern territory bordering the Great Lakes. Ohio, with just under 12 million inhabitants, is not one of the destinations with more attractions precisely throughout the United States. It stands out, mainly, for being the birthplace of some of the most important tire companies in the world, such as GoodYear or Goodrich, natives of Akron, the hometown of LeBron James, legend of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have lately been another of the outbreaks of the state, such as the Rock Hall of Fame, located in the city of Cleveland. But little else. Yet every four years, the focus of media attention shifts to the state of Ohio. It is usually the largest representative of a thing called ‘swinging states’, or changing states. We are referring to states that do not have a purely Republican or Democratic voting tradition, but tend to vary with great frequency. This means that they are usually the ones who, in the end, determine the color of the candidate to arrive or stay in the White House. Here you can usually find places like Florida, Pennsylvania or Texas. But none tends to attract as much attention as Ohio.Since World War II, since the 1944 presidential election – Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt won – Ohio has been a magnificent predictor of the winner of the election. Whoever has won there has won in the United States on all occasions except one, in 1960.Then Richard Nixon was preferred in Ohio, but the one who made it to the White House was John Fitzerald Kennedy. The winning candidate in Ohio has made it to the White House every time since WWII except 1960 Could it be Donald Trump Nixon’s ‘successor’? If this time the polls were right – which they did not do in 2016 – it could be the case. Because so far, the current president rules with a small but maintained advantage in the Ohio polls, always with between two and three percentage points in favor. Yet Democrat Biden is the frontrunner to win the election, according to most polls in the U.S. This state has never had a more Democratic or Republican bias: In the past 100 years, the Democratic Party has been the Most voted in Ohio 12 times, while the Republican Party has been 15 times, including the last electoral appointment, with Donald Trump. Yes, it is true that in recent decades the population of Ohio has barely grown, as it has done in the country as a whole, which means that its weight in the US as a whole is relatively less. This means that Ohio has been losing electoral votes: a third of the 26 it had in the decade of the 79. It currently has 18 electoral votes. In the last elections, Donald Trump surpassed Hillary Clinton by 8 points of difference in Ohio, the largest margin in this state since 1988, when George Bush Sr. won.