The Advocate continues its coverage of four
swing states this week with Ohio, the state that could well
decide the 2008 election ... and the state that John
Kerry lost by a scant 119,000 votes in 2004. This
story is the first of four pieces focusing on the
state's political dynamics, LGBT concerns, and how it all
will play out on Election Day.
Target State: Ohio
Electoral College Votes: 20?
Voted for Bush: 2000 and 2004 ?
Governor: Ted Strickland (D)?
State Senate: 12 Dem, 21 GOP?
State House: 46 Dem, 53 GOP
When President
George W. Bush edged out John Kerry in Ohio by just two
percentage points in 2004, some analysts argued he was
helped by receiving 16% of the African-American
vote -- up from 9% in 2000 -- and that the black
voters had shown up to vote in favor of the
state’s constitutional marriage amendment.
Whether that
theory is true or not, it won’t help Sen. John McCain
much this year, since an ABC News/Washington Post poll
earlier this month showed the state’s black
voters supporting Sen. Barack Obama over McCain 98% to
1%. Accordingly, the Obama campaign is trying to maximize
turnout among the state’s African-American
electorate, and campaign officials reportedly
believe they must achieve a 75% turnout rate in that
demographic.
But as always,
Ohio will be a game of margins and some of those margins
are still in question. For instance, Ohio's secretary of
state says that about 200,000 of the state’s
roughly 666,000 new voters registered since the start
of 2008 still have to be verified. To put that in
perspective, John Kerry lost the state in 2004 by
about 119,000 votes.
A recent poll by
Fox News/Rasmussen Reports survey taken Sunday night
puts Barack Obama about four percentage
points (49%-45%) ahead of John McCain -- the
widest lead in several weeks of seesawing polls that
gave McCain a two-point advantage last week and had Obama up
by two the previous week.
“Both
candidates have put a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a
lot of money into Ohio, and what I see right now is
Barack Obama with a small but measurable lead in
Ohio,” says Herb Asher, professor of political
science at Ohio State University.
Obama is helped
by a number of factors in Ohio this year, not the least
of which are the economy and a superior ground game to that
of the Democrats in 2004.
“John
Kerry’s campaign basically focused on the six major
urban counties,” Asher says. “The Obama
campaign is organized throughout the state, including
in regions where he’s not going to carry those
counties. If you can reduce your deficit in certain
areas, that’s just as good as getting the vote
of another area.”
Asher names
Delaware County, just north of Columbus, for instance, as
one of the fastest-growing areas of the state and
highly Republican. “I’m very confident
John McCain will carry it,” Asher says, “but
the interesting thing will be, how does he do in
comparison to George Bush, four years ago? And my
guess is that he won’t do as well.”
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Eleveld is the political editor for The
Advocate.