One Political Rule to Rule Them All

Harry Enten had a column in the Guardian recently about political "rules." You know, like "incumbents never win re-election with approval ratings below 50%." Until, of course, they do. The basic conclusion of the article is the very sensible one, namely that, since in each election one can find scores of rules saying that both candidates simply must win, the rules are basically bunk. Like I said, this is basically sensible, but there's one rule of which I'm rather fond: no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. I like this because it makes sense, and it illustrates the one long-term constant of American partisan politics. Ohio is the state which, perhaps more than any other, embodies the business interest. Other industrial Northern states tend to contain bigger, denser cities, leading to more sympathy for the workers and liberalism in general; Southern and Western states typically have non-industrial concerns. But in Ohio, businessmen, business owners, and capitalists generally tend to be the dominant political group. And the only thing that's been a fixed point in the American political scene is that the Republican Party is pro-business. They were pro-business under Lincoln, pro-business under McKinley, pro-business under Coolidge and Hoover and Nixon and Reagan and Bush. It makes sense that if they couldn't even convince Ohio, the natural dwelling-place of their basic historical constituency, to vote for them, they wouldn't have much luck convincing the nation as a whole.



A bit more rigorously, Ohio has never been more than 9.8% more Democratic-leaning than the nation as a whole. Only three states have shown less willingness to favor the Democrats (Wyoming 9.7%, Alaska 9.2%, Kansas 8.0%), while only one state (Hawaii 1.8%) and Washington D.C. (-48.4%) have had lower best-relative-margin-for-Republican scores. Ohio, in other words, really doesn't like Democrats. It has never liked Democrats very much. Now, it's never been more than 16.5% more Republican than the nation, either; that 26.3% gap between best and worst relative margin for Democrats is the lowest in the nation. It is, in other words, the swing state's swing state. But since the Republican Party started in 1856, there have been 39 Presidential elections, and Ohio has been less Republican than the national vote in eight of them. It's been between 2 and 5 points Republican-leaning in fifteen. This .795 "winning percentage" for the state's favored party in the relative margin has been exceeded in only nine other states (DC, KS, WY, AK, ND, SD, HI, ID, NB); in the upcoming Congress, even giving DC one Representative, these nine states will have 13 Representatives to Ohio's 16; in other words, Ohio is a far more electorally important state than any other state that's shown as consistent a favoritism as it has. It really does make a whole lot of sense that Ohio is the most important state in a Republican Presidential contender's coalition, decade after decade.

As for 2012 in particular, if Obama's winning Ohio, expect him to also win Pennsylvania, as well as every other state in the region he "ought" to win (MI, IL, WI, MN). And if Obama wins Ohio and Pennsylvania, the math for Romney gets extremely hard. Actually, just by conceding Obama Ohio and Pennsylvania, the map-of-least-resistance for a Romney victory requires him to win Minnesota, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina, all of which Obama won, although Mitt could survive the loss of Midwestern Minnesota if he could also nab Nevada. Assuming Romney won't be making any headway into the Midwest and that he won't win Virginia, which has looked deep blue all election cycle, would require Romney to win New Jersey to win. You get the point. A loss in Ohio indicates strength in the Midwest, which indicates that Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin et al. are out of play, which gives Romney essentially zero remaining options. So look for this one to hold true: if Obama wins Ohio, he'll be re-elected.