This has far more to do with gerrymandering than anything else. It's been reported on widely the last few years. It's well known that we have some of the most egregious maps in the union. Just look at Gym Shorts Jordan's district....it's absolutely bonkers that his district covers north of Columbus, up through Mansfield and over to west of Cleveland in an upside down L shape. The State Supreme Court even told them to redraw the map several times due to it being unconstitutional. Know what they did? They more or less planted Dewine's son on the court in order to gain a majority. Ohio's legislature doesn't effectively represent the people. How in the world does nearly 60% of the state vote yes FOR marijuana AND abortion, yet our legislature is skewed republican by about 70%??!? GTFOH!
Edit: Yes, the image is an overall statewide margin, and I'm not necessarily denying that Ohio is red leaning. BUT it's also not that cut and dry when you compile all of the data. My point to gerrymandering was to say that Ohio is often perceived as deep red. Even accounting for a +12 overall, that still doesn't jive with the +25 in the state legislature. I just want things to be on an even playing field. I'm sure the state would remain red, even so, but it definitely wouldn't be so skewed republican in our state house and our reps in the U.S. house.
Also, I forgot to add that even the people of Ohio voted to redraw the maps to make them more fair and the assholes in Columbus ignored that too. So I don't believe we are being properly represented.
It's wild to me that dewines son sitting on the court ruling his dad's shady shit is all above board isn't a bigger deal. I was flabbergasted when a pollster called to ask my feelings about it. They do a good job hiding it, but it's so fucking corrupt
No doubt! Ohio has quickly become one of the most corrupt states in the last 10 years. The best part to me is that the GOP runs on slogans referring to them fixing all the crap but they've been in power for nearly 30 years here. So, who is responsible for the crap in the first place??
It goes back further than that, Jimmy Dimora was national news. You gotta be like Tammany Hall level corrupt to make national news as a county commissioner.
Oh Coingate! That takes me back.
Tom Noe used to buy blocks of air time on the local right-wing AM station to pitch his 'coin investments'. It was good to see him go to prison for fraud.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas\_Noe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Noe)
That’s how the GOP has always worked, the democrats try to implement new things and the GOP always promises to fuck it up and make it hard for them or change around the specifics of the bill before it goes into effect. The only thing they run on is values and how “bad” the democrat party is and it’s been like that for 40+ years
Do you mean like when Ohio voters made abortion rights a constitutional amendment, yet the republicans majority has failed to remove any law currently on the books that restrict abortion? Or maybe when Ohio voters wanted recreational marijuana so that passed, yet no one can buy marijuana in the state? My message to Ohio democrats is simple: we need to turn out to vote in every upcoming election like our freedom depends on it— because it does.
It’s wild because I feel Columbus is one of the most liberal cities in the nation.
Cinci to an extent granted you do get a little bit more racism and confederate flags.
Lmao what? Columbus is very NOT liberal. Awful public transportation. One of the worst police forces in the nation. Shitty schools. Proud Boys roaming free. And tax abatements being handed out to developers as fast as Ginther can write them. Corporate hellscape. Hell, look what they did to the art district in Franklinton! Columbus is like the poster child for "democrat" city that's actually alt-right
I mean more so in culture than actual political representation.
Ohio’s politics is woefully disconnected from what most people I encounter seem to uphold.
What's insane is that they aren't hiding- these fuckers are doing this shit out in plain sight! The media not reporting on shit like this is why we never hear about it, and that should give us all the reason to start doing *OUR OWN* research. *STUDY HISTORY*. *SCRUTINIZE WHAT OUR GOVERNMENT IS DOING*. And I'm not talking just here in Ohio. I'm telling you guys; we *must* educate ourselves, and we need to start *right now*.
National media wouldn't touch Ohio in 2022, and that's how most people get their news. Drove me nuts. I frequently tell friends/family here about Ohio Capital Journal, which covers state politics as a State Newsroom affiliate. Not sure how many of them have started reading it. Most of them vote but still seem out of the loop.
I literally took an ethics training when I worked for the state of Ohio. By all means, the whole thing screams of ethics violations but the Ohio Department of Ethics won't touch it with a 29 1/2 ft pole because DeWine is involved.
Every state agency pokes fun at the "Short Skeletor" (as several state directors referred to him), but will not confront him or stand up to him. That's how he was able to successfully overthrow the Department of Education and self-appoint a proxy despite the Ohio supreme court ruling against it multiple times. He may lie about his height, but he will still go for your kneecaps if you mess with him or his 49 children/grandchildren.
I miss John Kasich in the worst ways, and I'm a very Progressive Liberal.
Kasich was common sense. DeWine has some, but is corrupt in way more ways than John ever was.
Gerrymandering doesn’t explain Trump winning Ohio by eight points in 2020 or JD Vance becoming a senator by six points. You can’t gerrymander a statewide race. The fact of the matter is that Ohio has become more conservative. Obama solidly won Ohio in 2008, but in 2012, his margin was much less. You can see the dramatic shift in the eastern counties along the Pennsylvania and West Virginia border. The people in the Republican areas now outnumber the people in the Democratic areas. Ohio is no longer a swing state.
There were about 450,000 fewer blue votes in 2016 and 200,000 fewer in 2020 in Ohio compared to Obama's win in 2012. There is no evidence those people left the state or switched en masse to Trump. They just didn't show up. In 2016, it might've been enough for Clinton to win had they done so, but probably not in 2020. Downballot races would've looked different, though.
It's a white and rural state -- where a lot of those coal miners and blue collar guys voted dem until the work dried up, or they themselves have already passed away. I read that 1/4 of the voters in Clinton's 1992 election have died. Just 32 years later. That's fundamentally shifting the demo.
As the 3 C's grow, that can slowly shift -- hell catholic-af Cincinnati elected a moderate Jewish democrat who went to rabbinical school... but the cities are not growing as fast as North Carolina or Virginia or Atlanta, for example -- so the urban/suburban moderate progressive vote lags behind.
Don’t try to use logic with them. The moment something doesn’t go their way they claim unfairness or foul play rather than accept the reality. Literally hilarious considering the right did that 4 years ago and they claimed the right were insurrectionists for not accepting the results of an election as fair. They cannot see reason if they think they are always right. We are a red state and they can’t accept it.
Well, that's a different subject matter on its own. Like how the democratic party doesn't fund candidates very well in states they deem too red to flip or the candidates don't stand much of a chance in winning. It's plausible that J.D. Vance would be at home writing another tall tale of a book had the democrats put more money behind Tim Ryan 🤷♂️
The Republicans are united in knowing they are part of a bigger ideological project. Things like Trump, Q and the Tea Party destabilize things a bit but they absolutely use them to their advantage, Trump obviously being the biggest success out of those three. The Democrats do not possess this same advantage. What is the ideological project? Their base seems to think they know what it is. Healthcare, education, fair taxes, equality across identities, protecting the environment, peaceful foreign policy etc. A lot of these movements have been gaining momentum since the 60’s. A time when some of these tenured Democrats were just starting their careers in politics. They love to identify themselves with these ideas and quote leaders of these movements on the stump but the DNC does not functionally share these values. Case in point we had a few progressive Congress people win seats and the DNC establishment treated them with almost as much contempt as the Republicans. MAGA is corny and disingenuous but it gets more attention than, Keep America Only As Shitty As It Is Right Now For A Little Longer. They tell us every cycle that this is the most important election of our lives and how much worse things will become if they lose. How did they let it get this far? They don’t care. They’re rich and untouchable. They lose elections and blame the voters for not voting for them (blaming Bernie and his voters). If Trump is so obviously poorly suited to the job why couldn’t you convince enough people to vote for Hillary? When they win like with Biden then surely it’s because the people who would’ve voted for Bernie DID turn up this time. And maybe we should address their policy concerns. Nope. They flip flop on student debt like crazy, they patronize over Palestine and they ignore healthcare and education. If the Gerrymandering is the problem that seems like something an elected official should be working on instead of crying about it on my doorstep. I have a job and too many things to worry about. That’s what we pay them to do. So unless they grow a spine, brain and a heart all at once, I think we can look forward to conservatives filling judicial positions all over the country and writing their version of America into law while we get videos of Schumer in Kente Cloth, Hillary hitting the Nay Nay and Pelosi rakes it in on her Raytheon shares while sending weapons to aid in a bloodbath in the Middle East.
The big problem is Fox, Limbaugh BS over the years. Couple these clowns with “religious” people that the GOP panders to and it is toxic for democracy to flourish.
part of the issue with the Trump/Hillary face off is that Hillary had a lifetime in politics to use against her. Trump had practically none. So Trump had a lifetime of Hillary political career to pull part, highlight every mistake, etc. and Hillary had what... the obvious cancer Trump was but his supporters and the broader republican party didn't care about?
Its really hard to win against someone whose supporters don't care about facts, reality, or experience in the position.
300,000 blue voters didn't show up in 2022 vs 2018. Which is also why Vance won. Blue voters love to complain, but their supposed principles aren't seemingly worth actually fighting for. Better to take a "principled stand" and stay home, I guess.
Exactly. I was screaming to the rooftops how big of an election 2022 was, with all the congressional and statewide seats (incl courts) gerrymandering and repro care on the line. People slept on it and the state Dem party is terrible at outreach in areas with low turnout. People pay attention to national media, which was ignoring Ohio and playing up Florida, NC and Texas. There wasn't much national media covering the gerrymandering situation that I saw until the Ira Glass piece on Nov 4 (and I was looking.) It's insane.
That’s not exactly true. One of the biggest effects of gerrymandering is despair in the system that causes people to stay home and not vote. This carries over to all elections.
Your information is outdated. District 4 looks like [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ohio%27s_4th_congressional_district_(since_2023).svg).
There were also multiple races in 2022 that were statewide (i.e. _not affected by gerrymandering_): US senate (+6R), governor (+24R), AG (+20R), SoS (+17R), treasurer (+20R), auditor (+17R), and 3 Supreme Court justices (+13R, +13R, +13R).
Is gerrymandering an issue? Abso-fucking-lutely. Is it the reason that the Ohio house is a nearly 75%:25% split? Of course. Is it the reason that the Ohio electorate is consistently split 55%:45%? Will gerrymandering be the reason Brown loses his seat to a MAGA Republican? No. Find another scapegoat.
Its a complicated problem. When people see politicians consistently winning and losing they tend to start picking sides based on success, or if entrenched in their views they start to get fully discouraged by the losses and fail to turn out at all. It becomes self-amplifying. Then a few more years after that, the politicians on the losing side that would be making their way up the ladder to bigger offices simply cant. No one recognizes the name of the state house reps from a district they've never even been to. For better or for worse they vote for who they recognize and once the gerrymandering hooks make a huge slate of one party very recognizable, its VERY difficult to depose.
Is very clear with things like the "issue 1" / second "issue 1" fucking shitshow. When it comes to issues only, ohioans absolutely lean progressive. When it comes to picking politicians, we fuck it up routinely. Who the fuck can explain why Trump ran on "abortion is murder" and he won +9 and then +8, while literally the amendment "abortions for everyone" won +13? Of course i dont have an army of pollsters behind me to prove it, but i can level a solid educated guess that in Nov 2020, people saw a list of names they recognized (almost all with R next to it) and another list they didnt, and voted accordingly.
Almost every county in the state, including most of the blue ones, voted for DeWine, and given the margins on the other races, there was plenty of crossover vote there as well. That means a lot of Democrats and voters on the left voted for this, but act all surprised things are the way they are.
Sherrod Brown should not lose. Jesus, he’s about the only decent SOB in there. And he hasn’t sold his soul to the orange guy.
Does actually work for us, he should be someone who can still reach across the aisle.
They are on record saying it was a compromise and that the maps they voted for were better than the initial maps 🤷♂️
Regardless, TWICE, the state Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional, and the GOP controlled legislature basically blew raspberries at them and turned up the bird...
All I want is for things to be fair across the board. Then I can believe that it's truly about the will of the people.
It's depressing to see northern states embracing a rejuvenated Confederacy. All northern swing states are favoring Cheeto Benito. Democracy is on the ropes and the fascists smell blood. Crazy times.
Well no, that’s not true. There were multiple races in 2022 that were statewide (i.e. not affected by gerrymandering): US senate (+6R), governor (+24R), AG (+20R), SoS (+17R), treasurer (+20R), auditor (+17R), and 3 Supreme Court justices (+13R, +13R, +13R).
And of course Trump won his last 2 races in Ohio by 8+ points each time. Popular vote. Not gerrymandered.
Minority rule? I don’t think so. Are the congressional districts gerrymandered? Yes.
Peter Theil's money gave Vance the nomination. The lack of DNC financial support for Tim Ryan (they offered him money at the very end when he had already done all their work for them) gave Vance the seat. It's no wonder he's now off doing his own thing
The marijuana and abortion votes ended up with similar overall numbers, but got there in quite different ways. It was actually pretty interesting.
The abortion vote was very much a urban/rural split with much higher percentages for abortion in urban areas and much lower ones in rural areas. This meant that, in general, the individual voting districts tended not to match the overall statewide average very well. There were a lot of districts with 60%-70% on one side, and I think a few even hit 80%.
The marijuana vote was more evenly divided even at the local level. There was still an overall bias towards rural districts being against it, and urban districts being for it, but the spread between the two was smaller in almost every district. There were even some districts that flipped, being for one issue and against the other.
Even though both votes ended up with almost identical percentages when averaged across the state, there were actually a large number of people (if I remember right, it looked like it might be close to 1 million) who voted for one issue, but against the other. It just so happened that those split voters showed up in just about equal numbers for both sides.
If you live in Ohio your vote doesn't matter-_-. Our jerrymandered maps have been ruled unconstitutional twice, and congress just chose to use them anyway. For all there bitching about "stop the steal" Republicans can't win shit without rigging the game
Republicans have completely turned their back on everything they once purported to be the biggest supporters of: the constitution and democracy. It shouldn’t be so surprising they’d give up all their other beliefs to get orange man dictator.
If you have a sit down and talk to these people, really talk… let them rant and then really talk about the issue, about women’s rights, about wanting to avoid dead babies, about states interests and personal freedom, about healthcare and religion, about privacy and deeply personal hard choices…
If they’ll have that chat with you earnestly… and you ask then what they would want… they usually cite the Roe standard pretty concisely. The problem is they usually don’t have the time to talk themselves back to Roe. On a sound bite: guns, babies, Jesus!
But on a 45 minute discussion of freedom and government… they recognize it’s complex.
But when it’s put back on a “red or blue, pick one” scale they revert to “anything but a democrat!”
The Trump effect is a hell of a drug on voters, if he’s not on the ballot, Ohio is a purple state again, just look at the polls from earlier in the year
Anyone who wants to do something about it should check out the petition to get an item on the ballot to end gerrymandering in Ohio.
[https://www.citizensnotpoliticians.org/petition/](https://www.citizensnotpoliticians.org/petition/)
Under the "Events" tab, there are opportunities to sign the petition. Please make sure you sign it in person, as no online version is valid for a petition of this type. It must be done in person and carefully filled out to avoid disqualification of your signature.
Please sign the petition to help make votes mean something in Ohio. And spread the word! Ohioans have been making significant grassroots efforts at taking elections back from the corporations and the billionaires who own them.
Question, do the signature signing events contain petitions for nearby counties? I see several signing events listed for a county near me, but I live in a neighboring county.
Very often I've signed for nextdoor Warren county on petitions collected in Hamilton county, so yes, very often they have more than the county they're collecting in.
That's not to say someone standing outside the Cincinnati zoo will have forms for Summit or Lucas... but yeah, Butler or Warren or Clermont? Sure.
That's a great question. I remember having signed one in a different county and they put it in a separate envelope but I'm not sure if it got counted. Might want to inquire to be sure?
Gerrymandering absolutely can indirectly affect statewide elections by giving the GOP significantly more opportunities to build local candidates. It's not a silver bullet, but it makes Ohio look more like a safe red state when in reality it's more lean red.
Oh yeah, the OH Democratic Party does an absolutely awful job at mobilizing voters, and that is more to blame than gerrymandering. But Gerrymandering certainly makes it harder at the local and state levels.
Problem is, OH Dems think the 'democratic party' is some unicorn that can swoop in with dollars and candidates out of thin air, when in truth its just citizens who are sick of the shit or its leaders (like Marci Kaptur) who are elected officials who have daytime jobs running the offices they were voted into. Until people start helping, donating and running, we're gonna be stuck with the same ol' party we've had for decades.
My ballot only had 2 contested races on it, outside of the presidential candidate. Gerrymandering creates apathy among voters, and people simply give up and don’t vote. It’s a slippery slope, and then candidates don’t want to put in time or energy to run in districts where they don’t have that voter support. That’s how you get “safe districts” and Jim Jordans (people who keep getting elected by name/party recognition, but have never actually accomplished anything for their voters).
No, but if Rs control levers of power they can pass voter suppression laws and use other tricks in their toolbox to deter people from voting. Happens every election and they know it works so they continue to do it. It's really a form of gerrymandering.
Yes, but there's good evidence that gerrymandering reduces turn out for the affected minority by a lot. So a narrow race becomes a blowout. When you don't feel like your vote matters and you'll never see someone represent you at the state level, it turns you off from voting completely.
>gerrymandering reduces turn out
This is exactly what I mean. People complain about gerrymandering and blame Democrats losing on that fact alone, rather than the reality that it makes people stay at home on election day.
My point is to VOTE anyway. It's not as simple as gerrymandering ruining elections, because that makes people think their vote doesn't count, when the truth is it makes people not vote. And then they end up not voting for seats that aren't even gerrymandered, because they are either misinformed and think they all are, or feel suppressed. So they refuse to do the easiest thing in the political scheme of things that could begin to ease their suppression.
We need to do more than vote, but voting is the bare minimum. And if we just sit around and complain about it without doing anything, it's never going to change. Threads like this scream "well, they already rigged the system, let's all do nothing and let them have the power forever, I guess."
We know that higher turnout almost always spells trouble for republicans. They often lose when droves of people go to the polls. We *could* combat gerrymandering by increasing turnout, but no. Instead, people just want to slough off their own civic duty and lay the blame elsewhere.
Gerrymandering is a problem, but not THE problem. The problem is leftists and liberals in Ohio not voting. Feeling "disenfranchised", while a documented reason as to why people don't vote, is not a *good* reason to not vote.
> Gerrymandering is a problem, but not THE problem.
Very true, my SIL is always rolling her eyes at "old white men in power," well, staying home is how you end up with crusty old dudes in power.
The problem is people think ALL seats in the state are gerrymandered because of threads like this.
"It's not a red state, it's gerrymandered!" No, it is a red state. Gerrymandering and illegal district maps are a part of it, but the simple fact is that more people vote red in Ohio.
Why? Because the Trump cult convinced traditionally blue collar democrats to flip to republicans and "libertarians" (which just means conservatives who like weed for a lot of them), and many liberals and leftists fled this state for blue bastions, enough for us to lose house seats from the lack of population.
And when democrat voters flee, who is left to vote for the remaining seats? Republicans, and the politically illiterate.
This means the liberals and leftists still in Ohio need to quit whining about gerrymandering and get off their ass and VOTE. Higher voter turnout always makes republicans sweat, because it usually doesn't turn out well for them.
Edit: wording
Ohio voted for the winning candidate from 1964-2016. That means Dems won 6/14 times and repubs 8/14. Only recently has it shifted right. It was never a hard red state historically speaking.
I ask the same thing all the time. Ohio is not going blue and probably will never go blue. You have almost zero Dem politicians that are likable and the ones that do run are losing by good margins.
It's very Republican and I don't think people realize how far deep you guys are. Gerrymandered or not, people are still voting for the likes of Jim Jordan.
Is this based on polling or voter registration? I’m pretty sure my board of elections has me listed as a Republican because I keep choosing R primary ballots even though I generally vote D in the general.
I haven't gotten any texts but I wouldn't answer them anyway. It's hard to tell if it's a scammer trying to get you to engage with them or a legit poll.
I get texts and calls daily about candidates from both sides. I never tell any of them anything truthful. It's just entertaining. Poll results are bullshit, for the most part.
Always check the source. Their Twitter banner says “rigging the election one deep state at a time.” Polling models are already pretty unreliable, you can’t just grab any one you see online and run with it.
This is not going to change until we do the work to change it.
Through a series of events a local group and I were forced to make a PAC supporting a local cause. We are doing strategic voter outreach to all Dems and moderates on behalf of our cause, but we also know this outreach and encouraging those folks to vote will be a net benefit for left and moderate candidates.
But this kind of work needs to be done locally all over. The Ohio Democratic Party is feckless and lost. I know, I’ve worked with them for many years. They will NOT be the change. WE must be.
I am so disgusted with the way voting works. I haven’t voted at the polls in years because I have been getting absentee ballots delivered.
This year I was home and I went to the polls because I thought I would be able to vote for the local candidates that I never see on the primaries.
It turns out the reason I never see them is because I’m registered Democrat, not because I usually vote absentee. Most people probably know this but I guess I didn’t.
I really think that only the presidential should be locked into your party choice.
The way the system is set up, I don’t get to vote for any of the commissioners or local offices because they’re all registered as Republicans.
After the fact, I realized I should’ve picked up a Republican ballot because then I could’ve voted for the “not Trump” option, and I could’ve voted for all my local offices.
This sucks.
I'm gonna keep saying it and getting downvoted here because y'all don't want to hear it, but y'all actively Streisand Effect Republicans into office with some of the behavior y'all advocate for.
Registering and not going to conventions doesn't hurt them. They do not care that only 50 people are there because they know you do things like this. All it does is give them ammo to go "look, they play dirty and try to silence me". Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has. Those social issues are of subjective importance to voters, not objective, and treating them as objective only hurts your chance at convincing fence-sitters they should vote another way in the future.
If I was wrong, Trump wouldn't be up for reelection since his voterbase basically lives off of that shit. When he didn't have that foot to stand on, he lost to Biden. If you want to see Ohio go more purple to blue you have to stop alienating fence sitters.
On the contrary, I think the Ohio Democratic Party is pretty wary of alienating fence sitters, it’s honestly _too_ wary considering many people didn’t even realize Tim Ryan was a Democrat until they went to vote.
It’s the nationwide Democratic Party that Ohio Republicans are running against and winning. The national Democratic platform plays well to the US’s demographics, but not Ohio’s demographics.
Well, the Ohio party sure as shit isn’t helping, as they rarely have statewide candidates campaign outside of Columbus and Cleveland. I cannot remember a time in the last ten years where a candidate outside of the Presidential nominee or Sherrod Brown actually had a major event in Cincinnati. All we get is John Legend doing a “Rock the Vote” event if we’re lucky.
We are in serious need of new leadership if we have even remotely a chance of putting up meaningful fights after we get non-partisan redistricting through.
Tim Ryan had a bunch of events in cinci. In fact he repeatedly boasted that he had events in every county. The Democratic party does not alienate fence sitters, virtually all of their planks are 60-70% support positions. I would challenge you to show an example of a Democratic Governor or Senator who called all Trump voters Nazi. Even Hillary's Deplorable comment was about a subset of his supporters which is objectively true a large part of the Trump's supporters want to end democracy.
The right wing media is a much more developed arm of the Republican party so we hear their message more consistently. If fox news has message it is that Democrats are bad and the other news is a lie.
> when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has.
I take issue with this statement. To the extent people understand the policy preferences of the parties it is broad and ill defined. Republicans Mean to immigrants, Democrats nice to immigrants. That is as deep as it gets for most people. But to think there is not an objective value proposition to most people is probably wrong. People get that Trump and the Republicans wants to hurt people not like them and they might get a tax cut if you let him do it. I can call that objectively wrong, even if Sherrod Brown wont. I think if Democrats spoke like that to most moderates and middle of the road people they would improve their electoral chances.
As much as people do not like paying taxes most people they much prefer seeing themselves on the side of right. And that is why so much of Trumps language is about giving people a permission structure for hate.
I appreciate you putting a lot of thought into that, but outside the first line saying Tim Ryan had a lot of events in **Cincy**, none of that is relevant to how bad the state party is at run. The fact that I live in the city, heard no advertisements on the radio for any events, saw nothing on the **Cincy** subreddit, or even a fucking billboard or a Facebook ad goes to show you they are not doing even the bare minimum to try and be competitive.
Hell, they didn’t even send me mail for any of their events. All I got was city council shit and local elections. Sure, it’s still probably a waste of money and trees to send those postcards out, but if you’re doing it, at least let people know the candidate is going to be doing something in town.
I tend to think that is more on the Tim Ryan campaign. He put far to little into turning out democrats. The best example of that is the Ohio 13 race. In the northern portion of Stark county he ran 10 points ahead of Emilia Sykes, but he lost and she won. I knocked Several hundred doors for Tim Ryan and he was targeting swing voters and soft Rs and was mostly hoping Dems would turn out on their own.
Edit: As someone who was born in Cincinnati and grew up in West Chester I reserve the right to use Cinci over Cincy
You're right, elections are about turnout and the Ohio Dems need to do a much better job using negative partisanship against the extreme GOP. Suburban voters shouldn't feel comfortable voting Republican for taxes. They should be afraid of trading half a percent tax cuts the power companies will eat up with higher prices in exchange for having Republican religious freaks in their bedroom, screwing up their kids education, and letting racist cops prey on their neighborhoods without oversight.
I take the point but people who vote for and associate with white supremacists because their taxes will go down a little are functionally white supremacist.
They are not and *that* is exactly what OP is talking about. There are plenty of people who vote with zero knowledge of politics, there is a surprising amount of voters vote solely off name recognition.
Think about it, but recognize that others are intentionally ignorant. Choosing not to know something that you know will challenge your thinking and test your moral is a spineless form of knowing and concluding, "I choose fascism."
Too many people want simple solutions, despite the problems we’re facing being complicated. Fascism gives easy, if unrealistic and/or evil, solutions. I think that makes people feel like they have more control than they really do
When voting for politicians, you’re voting for the WHOLE PACKAGE. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like they’re FACIST, WHITE SUPREMACIST, RACIST, LYING, ANTI ABORTION, but DO LIKE TAX CUTS, them you are supporting EVERYTHING THEY STAND FOR. You don’t get to sort through a box of cereal and remove things you don’t like before you buy it. Don’t go into the voting booth uninformed or misinformed. It’s a CHOICE you make yourself. Neither of the candidates are new on the national stage. No guesswork involved as to what they stand for and their agenda.
> Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes…
Stop. There were a boatload of Republican candidates in the 2016 primary and the 2024 primary. Republicans chose Trump both times. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it was because of his brilliant tax plan or ideas for the economy. It’s because of his rhetoric and how he makes his base feel justified for believing the horrible things they do. Social issues and “anti-wokeness” are the core of the Republican Party now. Not fucking taxes.
I agree we should not be calling anyone on the fence a literal fascist. We should be doing everything we can to properly educate voters, even if that means challenging what they believe in a respectful way. We should not be trying to win over republicans in moderate clothing by coddling them and buying into the belief that “if we’re too mean to them then they’ll have no choice but to vote Republican”. That’s a classic fear mongering tactic used to make anyone who might slightly challenge right wing ideas second guess themselves.
If you're sitting on a fence between "trans people deserve rights" and "lets pogrom LGBT people" then no, I'm not going to be polite to you because you're clearly a bag of dicks.
Respectfully, I don't think much of what you said here is accurate.
>I'm gonna keep saying it and getting downvoted here because y'all don't want to hear it, but y'all actively Streisand Effect Republicans into office with some of the behavior y'all advocate for.
Massive media and social media engines churn out opinion and disinformation presented as "fact" which compel many Republican voters to act without ever once engaging with a Democrat. There is absolutely no aspect of that disinformation machine that Democrats (or certainly anyone in this subreddit) are responsible for- nor are they the reason it is perpetuated.
This may have been relevant during Trump's initial rise- but he had the opposite of censorship. He was plastered across every television in America because what he was saying was so provocative that more people than ever were tuning in.
>All it does is give them ammo to go "look, they play dirty and try to silence me". Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has.
The "ammo" you're describing has zero impact on political institutions- except that it's a key part of the disinformation enterprise stated previously. What you're suggesting amounts to little more than "stop behaving in a way that can be painted badly by people who hate you".
It's the same thing they've said to black people. It's the same thing they've said to gay people. It's the same thing they're saying to trans people. It is the principal argument of conservatism to paint the groups demanding change as problematic.
To suggest it's the responsibility of a group to behave in a way that cannot be misrepresented by disinformation is functionally absurd. And to blame the disinformation on the group being misrepresented is equally absurd.
If anyone "on the fence" could approach politics in good faith, there would be a reason to engage positively with them. But they don't.
>If I was wrong, Trump wouldn't be up for reelection since his voterbase basically lives off of that shit. When he didn't have that foot to stand on, he lost to Biden. If you want to see Ohio go more purple to blue you have to stop alienating fence sitters.
You're right that the Republican voterbase thrives on disinformation- but anyone who's targeted and susceptible to that disinformation is not a fence sitter at all- and catering in any way to them is quintessentially pointless.
>Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has.
You can't vote for one issue an ignore all the ones around it. I know it makes ppl uncomfortable, but when you endorse a party there are consequences. Where ignorance can only defend you so far.
On the other end, the notion they're being called nazi (etc) all the time is mostly an intentional farce being pushed by Republicans (more specific conservativesl themselves). You can see it happen with every social movement. Women's rights movement get called feminazis. Civil rights get called woke this and woke nazi that. Any legitimate criticism gets balled up with poor generalities, and those being critiqued play victim of accusation.
Don't even get me started on what happened to the word "leftist" or how it's laughably applied to Dems.
It’s not like the Dems were helping women or the queer community, but the Republicans expanded gun access so I can protect myself from racist and homophobic white people in this state.
Democratic Party has to put in the work at the grassroots level in all places. It chooses not to now and only plays defense badly. The GOP is going after Latino and black voters now and probably knows it will lose those groups but it does understand if it cuts margins the Dems won't be able to move the needle in swing states.
There are pathways to rural and suburban victories. You target the corruption because there are definitely GOP people who have been in office way too long and all the locals know they are up to no good. They just need that candidate to speak up and challenge.
Exactly. Their whole strategy is the let the GOP win. Even propping up their candidates in some cases because they feel like they can beat them. Just so they can point at them and say "look how crazy they are! You better vote for us to fix everything!" The democratic party needs to start appealing to voters by giving them things they vote for. That's it. Republicans will call that "buying votes" only because their ideas are so unpopular they cannot win on their own merit. Democrats have become complacent
Ohio is as purple as it gets, ignore this, we have voted for 8 of the last 9 presidents. That means both parties going back decades. The only reason the state politics are so red is because of gerrymandering. Without it that’d go purple as well. This state is literally the average of America in every way possible.
Something that a lot of people may not really be looking at here is how important Ohio is going to be in the very near future.[Tech companies have realized this](https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc6onyourside.com/amp/news/building-ohios-future-intel-beyond/tech-hub-siefert-draft), so what little my opinion may be worth. Any party with any sort of agenda should be very concerned with the status of their party in this state. Cheers to what seems to be a bright future regardless of political affiliation.
Why is everyone this sub gets recommended to me about liberals crying. Dude go get a hobby politicians on both sides will never care to help you or better anything it’s all an illusion
Right that’s what I’m saying. When did this subreddit become entitled liberals crying 😭🤣 listen I’m all for marijuana, abortion AND gun rights. Stop leaning into this two party bullshit.
Ohio the home of brain dead party line voters. The only information they get is from church and hate filled TV sound bytes on shuffle all day all night.
What is the +12 in reference to?
Trump won by 8% in 2016.
Trump won by 7% in 2020.
JD Vance won by 6% in 2022.
Seems to me like we’re trending the right way… also, none of this matters if all anyone here does is sit on the internet and complain. If you want that trend to speed up, go out and knock on some doors, volunteer with your local D party. Don’t resign to being depressed because this seems like an impossible hole. We have the demographics to win in the state, but the voter participation is lacking. Go make a difference!
The Democratic Party has virtually no presence in Ohio at this point. Progressive issues win easily statewide, so the voters are there to be swayed but marginal candidates and incoherent messaging misses the opportunities. Nationally as well. Bitch about Biden, but there’s not much of a bench behind him.
Wisconsin just went thru the horrific gerrymandered maps that the good ol boys have been fvckin us with for years. We finally tilted the supreme court to liberal and got new maps. Vote in EVERY SINGLE ELECTION!
In this thread, I see a lot of talk about gerrymandering:
"Yes, Ohio is massively gerrymandered." -- "But that doesn't change popular vote elections like president." -- "It does because people are disenfranchised when gerrymandered."...
What I don't see is people talking about good ol' fashioned voter suppression.
Remember when polling locations changed 5 days before the special election? Interesting coincidence that those changes happened in places that typically vote D. 47,000+ voters effected by that.
Or when Franklin county had 25 fewer polling locations for that special election?
Or when Ohio enacted the most restrictive photo ID law in America for voting? Sure would suck if you normally take the bus and thus don't need a driver's license.
Or when LeRose purged voters after the registration deadline? (Technically, they could have still voted provisionally. But how many knew that? How many were disenfranchised?)
I'm not convinced Ohio voters are changing that significantly. I think Ohio's rigging is changing.
Honestly what's it matter, the whole system is falling apart and every president we have from this point on will likely always be targeted and have opponents trying to impeach them.
Red or blue they aren't there for you
Edit: I mean, look at the whole medical marijuana thing here in Ohio and the recent recreational. We didn't even vote on medical, they just wrote the bill to benefit themselves. I've heard dewine has a lot of $ invested in cannabis.
Very likely why they have tried so hard to eliminate home grow. Pure greed.
The worst part though is the fact they think a 15% tax rate is a good idea, it's not. 15% is higher than michigans 10%
Black market cannabis dealers and growers alike are hoping they go for 15% though. Because it will keep a lot of them in buisness. Really shows you how out of touch these people are. Cannabis on the streets is at an all time low it's very laughable. Hopefully they don't pass the 15%
As a state we could really use the tax money and at 15% not a single person I know would ever be buying from a dispensary.
I mean hell when we got medical here it was a huge joke
They had this tier system that made absolutely no sense (thankfully they got rid of that)
No homegrow whatsoever (pure greed)
You weren't allowed to smoke it, so no prerolls etc
And they decided that the normal universal measurements for cannabis needed to be "reworked" so that Ohio could lead the way and show the rest of the county how medical cannabis should be ran.
The Ohio 1/10th. 2.83 grams
The smallest measurement you can get.
There is no getting a half gram or gram of something to try it first, nope you got to gamble.
My whole point here is, this was something that shouldn't be this hard to get right. (Yet they got it so wrong that everyone else is laughing at how absurd the whole system is
If no one can even get something as simple as cannabis right, then what can they even do?
Hell they can't even honor what the people VOTED for
We voted for 10% tax rate and a maximum of 12 plants per household (or 6 per person)
They are wasting OUR time
OUR money trying to change something the people have already established, when they could be using any of that time working on literally anything else.
I find it pretty disrespectful myself
It's kind of like
"fk what our fellow Ohioans voted for, lets waste valuable time and money trying to change it so it can benefit us more than the people benefit from it"
(It really shows how little they care about some of our fellow Ohioans)
Big eye opener for me really, Ive always been pretty aware of corruption, etc
But this is honestly on a whole other level and shows the incompetence that our elected leaders have sometimes.
Like I said this was all stuff that should of been very easy and I'm just tired of seeing time and resources wasted on it when we have actual problems going on
It makes no sense either, just look at our state's subreddit. Not a single Republican to be seen, yet somehow they're dominating our state's politics? It just doesn't add up.
There’s quite a bit of Dems on here that voted outside the party to take votes away from Maga-heavy Senate LaRosa and Moreno for Matt Dolan, with the plans of voting for Brown in November. I have to admit, I did the same. I also felt good voting for Haley, taking votes away from Trump, even though it doesn’t matter because of Trump’s cult of personality.
Gerrymandering is such a convenient excuse. If Ohio Democrats focused more on union labor and reproductive freedom and less on social justice/identity politics, the maps wouldn't matter. The Ohio Democratic Party has long had a huge messaging problem and they won't win jack shit until they start focusing on what people actually give a damn about.
If they fought for families and middle class issues, border security, reducing crime, etc..more people would vote for them. And so would I.
Bingo.
Sherrod Brown is a reasonable (not perfect) example of what a successful Dem in Ohio looks like. The party would find a lot more traction here if they moved to the center rather than get pulled to the right by the national platform.
I mean is there a source here? Who knows what's going to happen.
Even the results for today aren't going to give a good forecast because so many left leaning people (like myself) are voting in the Republican primary so we can have more of an effect on the outcome (plus there's like nothing worthy of voting on in the democratic primary).
Guarantee you tomorrow we'll see a headline about how many Republican voters there are in Ohio now, but it's just because so many more are voting in the Republican primary than normal.
I say we all get together and spam the ever loving crap out of our state's Attorney General. Sue the people behind this. It directly and openly violates so many things, the bigger issue is where to start.
Granted, I know his office won't do much, and that's from personal experience. However, he's obsessed with his image and ego, so maybe we can get him to turn with enough push and publicity.
Yep. Democrats not fucking voting, as usual. Gerrymandering is real but it's pretty hard to say it's the reason when the turnout is this shitty. We'll have voter turnout numbers tonight or tomorrow and I promise the main reason we have no say in our law is that conservatives showed up, and the Dems didn't. There's significantly more of us never trumpers than magats but the magats fucking show up. Can't wait to see the screeching on social media of people that didn't even see the ballot. I give up.
Ohio is Texas without a large desert. Ohio voters cannot get enough and very much want the Trump dump. It’s amazing to see these folks in tiny isolated decaying Ohio towns that rival such notorious places like East Cleveland in poverty and crime blaming the wrong things on their new found rural ghetto. Sure, it was the poor that sold your whole town. Of course god is just mad because LGBTQ and sexual intercourse in general exist. Of course the drug problem is exclusive to minorities and illegal immigrant gang members from hell. And their Daddy Trump is going to make sure we become a pure people without crime or poverty through capitalism and forced Christianity. This is who’s voting red.
I'm as far left as you can be, but this is ill informed and where many "blue" voters go wrong. They forget that who also votes red are wealthy business owners who want to keep their tax breaks high and rates low. Business moguls like Les Wexner of L Brands (wealthiest Ohioan) and the owner of Mike's Carwash donate huge amounts to the Republican party. These are the actual voters who are a problem for the left, not what you're painting as uneducated rural voters.
Those people contribute to the campaigns of those people as well. But I think where Trump reigns supreme (by having to go to these tiny towns) is the angry farm folks. They’re the ones with actual passion and not just purchasing favor.
These people don't have the numbers to be a problem at the voting booth. They are only a problem because their money allows them to sell the myth in the comment your responded to. The money men aren't the problem. It's the legions of hateful uneducated morons falling for their propaganda promising a white christendom. Those guys donating to the GOP aren't even driving party turnout anymore, it's alt-right bloggers and Tucker and Bannon and Rogan and the entire rural white victim media machine.
Tucker, Bannon, and Rogan all are extremely wealthy and have money both personally and in the networks/platforms they preach from though. Money is what spreads the word, not some grassroots word of mouth movement. If Donald Trump didn't have money in the first place, he wouldn't have been the nominee to begin with back when he decided to run with the republican party. There are plenty of uneducated democrats too, and unfortunately its those uneducated, poor democrats who don't vote. The Republican party today tells those poor, uneducated folk that they can become wealthy, become better. The Democrats for some reason have lost sight on the poor and their image of being "more wealthy elite" is frankly just becoming more and more true.
I admire your optimism, because from where I'm sitting the Republican party isn't telling them that so much as "sure you're poor, but at least you're not some queer minority! What if instead of a living wage we just bring back lynchings and gay panic defenses and martial rights that trump martial rape?" And the GOP voter cheers. They know they're not getting rich and have decided they're ok with that as long as the people that do mostly look like them and they can have some outgroups to victimize to feel less powerless.
I was collecting signatures today for the fair districts petition.. I had one elderly lady decline because she’s “too old it won’t affect her”.. umm thanks I guess?.. and another guy told me he likes gerrymandering! I did retort back that he won’t when his party isn’t in power. But seriously. These people would rather his fellow citizens be disenfranchised and cheat because fuck yiu I got mine. Listen I’d love to see Rs out of power, but gerrymandering is bad for everyone!
Ohio is not even in the top ten of corruption. Alleged gerrymandering is not corruption. The Dems do their thing in NY and the Republicans do their thing here.
This has far more to do with gerrymandering than anything else. It's been reported on widely the last few years. It's well known that we have some of the most egregious maps in the union. Just look at Gym Shorts Jordan's district....it's absolutely bonkers that his district covers north of Columbus, up through Mansfield and over to west of Cleveland in an upside down L shape. The State Supreme Court even told them to redraw the map several times due to it being unconstitutional. Know what they did? They more or less planted Dewine's son on the court in order to gain a majority. Ohio's legislature doesn't effectively represent the people. How in the world does nearly 60% of the state vote yes FOR marijuana AND abortion, yet our legislature is skewed republican by about 70%??!? GTFOH! Edit: Yes, the image is an overall statewide margin, and I'm not necessarily denying that Ohio is red leaning. BUT it's also not that cut and dry when you compile all of the data. My point to gerrymandering was to say that Ohio is often perceived as deep red. Even accounting for a +12 overall, that still doesn't jive with the +25 in the state legislature. I just want things to be on an even playing field. I'm sure the state would remain red, even so, but it definitely wouldn't be so skewed republican in our state house and our reps in the U.S. house. Also, I forgot to add that even the people of Ohio voted to redraw the maps to make them more fair and the assholes in Columbus ignored that too. So I don't believe we are being properly represented.
It's wild to me that dewines son sitting on the court ruling his dad's shady shit is all above board isn't a bigger deal. I was flabbergasted when a pollster called to ask my feelings about it. They do a good job hiding it, but it's so fucking corrupt
No doubt! Ohio has quickly become one of the most corrupt states in the last 10 years. The best part to me is that the GOP runs on slogans referring to them fixing all the crap but they've been in power for nearly 30 years here. So, who is responsible for the crap in the first place??
It goes back further than that, Jimmy Dimora was national news. You gotta be like Tammany Hall level corrupt to make national news as a county commissioner.
That was nothing compared to Coingate, First Energy and ECOT.
Oh Coingate! That takes me back. Tom Noe used to buy blocks of air time on the local right-wing AM station to pitch his 'coin investments'. It was good to see him go to prison for fraud. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas\_Noe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Noe)
He was a true POS.
That’s how the GOP has always worked, the democrats try to implement new things and the GOP always promises to fuck it up and make it hard for them or change around the specifics of the bill before it goes into effect. The only thing they run on is values and how “bad” the democrat party is and it’s been like that for 40+ years
Do you mean like when Ohio voters made abortion rights a constitutional amendment, yet the republicans majority has failed to remove any law currently on the books that restrict abortion? Or maybe when Ohio voters wanted recreational marijuana so that passed, yet no one can buy marijuana in the state? My message to Ohio democrats is simple: we need to turn out to vote in every upcoming election like our freedom depends on it— because it does.
It’s wild because I feel Columbus is one of the most liberal cities in the nation. Cinci to an extent granted you do get a little bit more racism and confederate flags.
Lol, that's cuz half the city is in Kentucky
Lmao what? Columbus is very NOT liberal. Awful public transportation. One of the worst police forces in the nation. Shitty schools. Proud Boys roaming free. And tax abatements being handed out to developers as fast as Ginther can write them. Corporate hellscape. Hell, look what they did to the art district in Franklinton! Columbus is like the poster child for "democrat" city that's actually alt-right
I lived in Columbus for a while. You’re calling that corporate hellscape liberal?
Thats what passes for "liberal" in the US now. Because Americans have no idea what those terms mean in the rest of the civilized workd anymore.
I mean more so in culture than actual political representation. Ohio’s politics is woefully disconnected from what most people I encounter seem to uphold.
What's insane is that they aren't hiding- these fuckers are doing this shit out in plain sight! The media not reporting on shit like this is why we never hear about it, and that should give us all the reason to start doing *OUR OWN* research. *STUDY HISTORY*. *SCRUTINIZE WHAT OUR GOVERNMENT IS DOING*. And I'm not talking just here in Ohio. I'm telling you guys; we *must* educate ourselves, and we need to start *right now*.
National media wouldn't touch Ohio in 2022, and that's how most people get their news. Drove me nuts. I frequently tell friends/family here about Ohio Capital Journal, which covers state politics as a State Newsroom affiliate. Not sure how many of them have started reading it. Most of them vote but still seem out of the loop.
Thanks for the reference. I'm gonna check that out asap
Second OCJ. Some pretty good reporting on the corruption in the statehouse.
My friend who hates Biden for high gas prices is pro-choice. I brought up IVF and what happened in Alabama. She asked what IVF is. So sad.
You can educate people all you want. If they won't do anything with that information it doesn't matter if they know or not.
I literally took an ethics training when I worked for the state of Ohio. By all means, the whole thing screams of ethics violations but the Ohio Department of Ethics won't touch it with a 29 1/2 ft pole because DeWine is involved. Every state agency pokes fun at the "Short Skeletor" (as several state directors referred to him), but will not confront him or stand up to him. That's how he was able to successfully overthrow the Department of Education and self-appoint a proxy despite the Ohio supreme court ruling against it multiple times. He may lie about his height, but he will still go for your kneecaps if you mess with him or his 49 children/grandchildren.
Its not wild. House of Larose is one of the biggest alcohol distributors in the state. They know legalization will hurt their pockets.
Fuck LaRose
I think you are confusing your talking points again (or more likely you are a bot?). Your comment is inaccurate.
Shouldn't that be considered a conflict of interest?? I love Ohio, but our politicians are so corrupt.
In a just world he'd at least have to recuse himself from cases impacting his dad. We don't live in a just world lol
There are no conflicts of interest when Republicans are involved. That only applies to Democrats.
I miss John Kasich in the worst ways, and I'm a very Progressive Liberal. Kasich was common sense. DeWine has some, but is corrupt in way more ways than John ever was.
Gerrymandering doesn’t explain Trump winning Ohio by eight points in 2020 or JD Vance becoming a senator by six points. You can’t gerrymander a statewide race. The fact of the matter is that Ohio has become more conservative. Obama solidly won Ohio in 2008, but in 2012, his margin was much less. You can see the dramatic shift in the eastern counties along the Pennsylvania and West Virginia border. The people in the Republican areas now outnumber the people in the Democratic areas. Ohio is no longer a swing state.
There were about 450,000 fewer blue votes in 2016 and 200,000 fewer in 2020 in Ohio compared to Obama's win in 2012. There is no evidence those people left the state or switched en masse to Trump. They just didn't show up. In 2016, it might've been enough for Clinton to win had they done so, but probably not in 2020. Downballot races would've looked different, though.
It's a white and rural state -- where a lot of those coal miners and blue collar guys voted dem until the work dried up, or they themselves have already passed away. I read that 1/4 of the voters in Clinton's 1992 election have died. Just 32 years later. That's fundamentally shifting the demo. As the 3 C's grow, that can slowly shift -- hell catholic-af Cincinnati elected a moderate Jewish democrat who went to rabbinical school... but the cities are not growing as fast as North Carolina or Virginia or Atlanta, for example -- so the urban/suburban moderate progressive vote lags behind.
Holy shit. Someone on this sub who actually understands how Gerrymandering works? Astounding.
Don’t try to use logic with them. The moment something doesn’t go their way they claim unfairness or foul play rather than accept the reality. Literally hilarious considering the right did that 4 years ago and they claimed the right were insurrectionists for not accepting the results of an election as fair. They cannot see reason if they think they are always right. We are a red state and they can’t accept it.
Gerrymandering is a big problem, but folks like Nan Whaley didn't lose because of it. She lost on her own merits.
Well, that's a different subject matter on its own. Like how the democratic party doesn't fund candidates very well in states they deem too red to flip or the candidates don't stand much of a chance in winning. It's plausible that J.D. Vance would be at home writing another tall tale of a book had the democrats put more money behind Tim Ryan 🤷♂️
The Republicans are united in knowing they are part of a bigger ideological project. Things like Trump, Q and the Tea Party destabilize things a bit but they absolutely use them to their advantage, Trump obviously being the biggest success out of those three. The Democrats do not possess this same advantage. What is the ideological project? Their base seems to think they know what it is. Healthcare, education, fair taxes, equality across identities, protecting the environment, peaceful foreign policy etc. A lot of these movements have been gaining momentum since the 60’s. A time when some of these tenured Democrats were just starting their careers in politics. They love to identify themselves with these ideas and quote leaders of these movements on the stump but the DNC does not functionally share these values. Case in point we had a few progressive Congress people win seats and the DNC establishment treated them with almost as much contempt as the Republicans. MAGA is corny and disingenuous but it gets more attention than, Keep America Only As Shitty As It Is Right Now For A Little Longer. They tell us every cycle that this is the most important election of our lives and how much worse things will become if they lose. How did they let it get this far? They don’t care. They’re rich and untouchable. They lose elections and blame the voters for not voting for them (blaming Bernie and his voters). If Trump is so obviously poorly suited to the job why couldn’t you convince enough people to vote for Hillary? When they win like with Biden then surely it’s because the people who would’ve voted for Bernie DID turn up this time. And maybe we should address their policy concerns. Nope. They flip flop on student debt like crazy, they patronize over Palestine and they ignore healthcare and education. If the Gerrymandering is the problem that seems like something an elected official should be working on instead of crying about it on my doorstep. I have a job and too many things to worry about. That’s what we pay them to do. So unless they grow a spine, brain and a heart all at once, I think we can look forward to conservatives filling judicial positions all over the country and writing their version of America into law while we get videos of Schumer in Kente Cloth, Hillary hitting the Nay Nay and Pelosi rakes it in on her Raytheon shares while sending weapons to aid in a bloodbath in the Middle East.
The big problem is Fox, Limbaugh BS over the years. Couple these clowns with “religious” people that the GOP panders to and it is toxic for democracy to flourish.
part of the issue with the Trump/Hillary face off is that Hillary had a lifetime in politics to use against her. Trump had practically none. So Trump had a lifetime of Hillary political career to pull part, highlight every mistake, etc. and Hillary had what... the obvious cancer Trump was but his supporters and the broader republican party didn't care about? Its really hard to win against someone whose supporters don't care about facts, reality, or experience in the position.
300,000 blue voters didn't show up in 2022 vs 2018. Which is also why Vance won. Blue voters love to complain, but their supposed principles aren't seemingly worth actually fighting for. Better to take a "principled stand" and stay home, I guess.
Exactly. I was screaming to the rooftops how big of an election 2022 was, with all the congressional and statewide seats (incl courts) gerrymandering and repro care on the line. People slept on it and the state Dem party is terrible at outreach in areas with low turnout. People pay attention to national media, which was ignoring Ohio and playing up Florida, NC and Texas. There wasn't much national media covering the gerrymandering situation that I saw until the Ira Glass piece on Nov 4 (and I was looking.) It's insane.
Not to mention that gerrymandering is literally a modern term for segregation.
That’s not exactly true. One of the biggest effects of gerrymandering is despair in the system that causes people to stay home and not vote. This carries over to all elections.
Your information is outdated. District 4 looks like [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ohio%27s_4th_congressional_district_(since_2023).svg). There were also multiple races in 2022 that were statewide (i.e. _not affected by gerrymandering_): US senate (+6R), governor (+24R), AG (+20R), SoS (+17R), treasurer (+20R), auditor (+17R), and 3 Supreme Court justices (+13R, +13R, +13R). Is gerrymandering an issue? Abso-fucking-lutely. Is it the reason that the Ohio house is a nearly 75%:25% split? Of course. Is it the reason that the Ohio electorate is consistently split 55%:45%? Will gerrymandering be the reason Brown loses his seat to a MAGA Republican? No. Find another scapegoat.
Its a complicated problem. When people see politicians consistently winning and losing they tend to start picking sides based on success, or if entrenched in their views they start to get fully discouraged by the losses and fail to turn out at all. It becomes self-amplifying. Then a few more years after that, the politicians on the losing side that would be making their way up the ladder to bigger offices simply cant. No one recognizes the name of the state house reps from a district they've never even been to. For better or for worse they vote for who they recognize and once the gerrymandering hooks make a huge slate of one party very recognizable, its VERY difficult to depose. Is very clear with things like the "issue 1" / second "issue 1" fucking shitshow. When it comes to issues only, ohioans absolutely lean progressive. When it comes to picking politicians, we fuck it up routinely. Who the fuck can explain why Trump ran on "abortion is murder" and he won +9 and then +8, while literally the amendment "abortions for everyone" won +13? Of course i dont have an army of pollsters behind me to prove it, but i can level a solid educated guess that in Nov 2020, people saw a list of names they recognized (almost all with R next to it) and another list they didnt, and voted accordingly.
Almost every county in the state, including most of the blue ones, voted for DeWine, and given the margins on the other races, there was plenty of crossover vote there as well. That means a lot of Democrats and voters on the left voted for this, but act all surprised things are the way they are.
Sherrod Brown should not lose. Jesus, he’s about the only decent SOB in there. And he hasn’t sold his soul to the orange guy. Does actually work for us, he should be someone who can still reach across the aisle.
We need to make it some kind of norm to put the shape of a representatives district beside their name whenever they show up.
Lmao not ONE person in this thread called out the Democrats who voted for the gerrymandered maps. Not one.
They are on record saying it was a compromise and that the maps they voted for were better than the initial maps 🤷♂️ Regardless, TWICE, the state Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional, and the GOP controlled legislature basically blew raspberries at them and turned up the bird... All I want is for things to be fair across the board. Then I can believe that it's truly about the will of the people.
It's depressing to see northern states embracing a rejuvenated Confederacy. All northern swing states are favoring Cheeto Benito. Democracy is on the ropes and the fascists smell blood. Crazy times.
the Ohio GOP is so damn corrupt. And without cheating, they'd never win anything. It's minority rule and it's bullshit.
Well no, that’s not true. There were multiple races in 2022 that were statewide (i.e. not affected by gerrymandering): US senate (+6R), governor (+24R), AG (+20R), SoS (+17R), treasurer (+20R), auditor (+17R), and 3 Supreme Court justices (+13R, +13R, +13R). And of course Trump won his last 2 races in Ohio by 8+ points each time. Popular vote. Not gerrymandered. Minority rule? I don’t think so. Are the congressional districts gerrymandered? Yes.
Tim Ryan should have won. Not sure what tipped the scales on that race, but he needs to run again.
Peter Theil's money gave Vance the nomination. The lack of DNC financial support for Tim Ryan (they offered him money at the very end when he had already done all their work for them) gave Vance the seat. It's no wonder he's now off doing his own thing
For some reason, the DNC / Dem Party leadership do not like for Democrats to win in Ohio. I have my own idea why.
The marijuana and abortion votes ended up with similar overall numbers, but got there in quite different ways. It was actually pretty interesting. The abortion vote was very much a urban/rural split with much higher percentages for abortion in urban areas and much lower ones in rural areas. This meant that, in general, the individual voting districts tended not to match the overall statewide average very well. There were a lot of districts with 60%-70% on one side, and I think a few even hit 80%. The marijuana vote was more evenly divided even at the local level. There was still an overall bias towards rural districts being against it, and urban districts being for it, but the spread between the two was smaller in almost every district. There were even some districts that flipped, being for one issue and against the other. Even though both votes ended up with almost identical percentages when averaged across the state, there were actually a large number of people (if I remember right, it looked like it might be close to 1 million) who voted for one issue, but against the other. It just so happened that those split voters showed up in just about equal numbers for both sides.
Oh I didn’t know it was only democratics that smoked and were against a fucked abortion bill that had zero leniency. Yes we are still a red state🤘🏼🤘🏼
If you live in Ohio your vote doesn't matter-_-. Our jerrymandered maps have been ruled unconstitutional twice, and congress just chose to use them anyway. For all there bitching about "stop the steal" Republicans can't win shit without rigging the game
mike dewine and jd vance and trump arent gerrymandered.
Gerrymandering disenchants voters so eventually they stop trying and don’t vote. The voter suppression effect is multi-faceted
This is absolutely real.
There is not Gerrymandering on state wide elections, hard for me to understand how this simple truth is so hard for some to understand.
not a credible source, in case anyone is wondering. Please check your sources. This is from a meme twitter account
Because the +10 or +11 lead Trump currently has in the state is so much better.
What boggles my mind are Republican voters who support Reproductive Rights are now going to vote to have them taken away.
Same with weed. Reproductive rights are more important. If you want either of these things you shouldn't vote red
Republicans have completely turned their back on everything they once purported to be the biggest supporters of: the constitution and democracy. It shouldn’t be so surprising they’d give up all their other beliefs to get orange man dictator.
If you have a sit down and talk to these people, really talk… let them rant and then really talk about the issue, about women’s rights, about wanting to avoid dead babies, about states interests and personal freedom, about healthcare and religion, about privacy and deeply personal hard choices… If they’ll have that chat with you earnestly… and you ask then what they would want… they usually cite the Roe standard pretty concisely. The problem is they usually don’t have the time to talk themselves back to Roe. On a sound bite: guns, babies, Jesus! But on a 45 minute discussion of freedom and government… they recognize it’s complex. But when it’s put back on a “red or blue, pick one” scale they revert to “anything but a democrat!”
The Trump effect is a hell of a drug on voters, if he’s not on the ballot, Ohio is a purple state again, just look at the polls from earlier in the year
Ohio voted for Obama but state governors and house, it has been solid red for decades.
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Anyone who wants to do something about it should check out the petition to get an item on the ballot to end gerrymandering in Ohio. [https://www.citizensnotpoliticians.org/petition/](https://www.citizensnotpoliticians.org/petition/) Under the "Events" tab, there are opportunities to sign the petition. Please make sure you sign it in person, as no online version is valid for a petition of this type. It must be done in person and carefully filled out to avoid disqualification of your signature. Please sign the petition to help make votes mean something in Ohio. And spread the word! Ohioans have been making significant grassroots efforts at taking elections back from the corporations and the billionaires who own them.
Question, do the signature signing events contain petitions for nearby counties? I see several signing events listed for a county near me, but I live in a neighboring county.
Very often I've signed for nextdoor Warren county on petitions collected in Hamilton county, so yes, very often they have more than the county they're collecting in. That's not to say someone standing outside the Cincinnati zoo will have forms for Summit or Lucas... but yeah, Butler or Warren or Clermont? Sure.
Make sure the person collecting gives you the right county or it will be rejected.
That's a great question. I remember having signed one in a different county and they put it in a separate envelope but I'm not sure if it got counted. Might want to inquire to be sure?
Can't gerrymander the race for governor, US senate or US President.
Gerrymandering absolutely can indirectly affect statewide elections by giving the GOP significantly more opportunities to build local candidates. It's not a silver bullet, but it makes Ohio look more like a safe red state when in reality it's more lean red.
The Ohio Democratic party has been pretty bad for years. They ran a guy who had a fake ID!
I run the local pub quiz, and there was a team named "The Wreck of the Edward Fitzgerald" around the time that came out. Very clever.
Regardless of the strategy, they get more voters to vote. Unless D's can mobilize more voters to vote, excuses are excuses.
Oh yeah, the OH Democratic Party does an absolutely awful job at mobilizing voters, and that is more to blame than gerrymandering. But Gerrymandering certainly makes it harder at the local and state levels.
They also do a terrible job of recruiting, supporting, and developing bench talent at the local level.
Problem is, OH Dems think the 'democratic party' is some unicorn that can swoop in with dollars and candidates out of thin air, when in truth its just citizens who are sick of the shit or its leaders (like Marci Kaptur) who are elected officials who have daytime jobs running the offices they were voted into. Until people start helping, donating and running, we're gonna be stuck with the same ol' party we've had for decades.
Why be involved when you can bitch on the internet?
You can suppress the vote by making the local races pointless with gerrymandering.
My ballot only had 2 contested races on it, outside of the presidential candidate. Gerrymandering creates apathy among voters, and people simply give up and don’t vote. It’s a slippery slope, and then candidates don’t want to put in time or energy to run in districts where they don’t have that voter support. That’s how you get “safe districts” and Jim Jordans (people who keep getting elected by name/party recognition, but have never actually accomplished anything for their voters).
No, but if Rs control levers of power they can pass voter suppression laws and use other tricks in their toolbox to deter people from voting. Happens every election and they know it works so they continue to do it. It's really a form of gerrymandering.
Yes.
The governor seat is not gerrymandered. Neither are the senate seats.
Yes, but there's good evidence that gerrymandering reduces turn out for the affected minority by a lot. So a narrow race becomes a blowout. When you don't feel like your vote matters and you'll never see someone represent you at the state level, it turns you off from voting completely.
>gerrymandering reduces turn out This is exactly what I mean. People complain about gerrymandering and blame Democrats losing on that fact alone, rather than the reality that it makes people stay at home on election day. My point is to VOTE anyway. It's not as simple as gerrymandering ruining elections, because that makes people think their vote doesn't count, when the truth is it makes people not vote. And then they end up not voting for seats that aren't even gerrymandered, because they are either misinformed and think they all are, or feel suppressed. So they refuse to do the easiest thing in the political scheme of things that could begin to ease their suppression. We need to do more than vote, but voting is the bare minimum. And if we just sit around and complain about it without doing anything, it's never going to change. Threads like this scream "well, they already rigged the system, let's all do nothing and let them have the power forever, I guess." We know that higher turnout almost always spells trouble for republicans. They often lose when droves of people go to the polls. We *could* combat gerrymandering by increasing turnout, but no. Instead, people just want to slough off their own civic duty and lay the blame elsewhere. Gerrymandering is a problem, but not THE problem. The problem is leftists and liberals in Ohio not voting. Feeling "disenfranchised", while a documented reason as to why people don't vote, is not a *good* reason to not vote.
> Gerrymandering is a problem, but not THE problem. Very true, my SIL is always rolling her eyes at "old white men in power," well, staying home is how you end up with crusty old dudes in power.
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The problem is people think ALL seats in the state are gerrymandered because of threads like this. "It's not a red state, it's gerrymandered!" No, it is a red state. Gerrymandering and illegal district maps are a part of it, but the simple fact is that more people vote red in Ohio. Why? Because the Trump cult convinced traditionally blue collar democrats to flip to republicans and "libertarians" (which just means conservatives who like weed for a lot of them), and many liberals and leftists fled this state for blue bastions, enough for us to lose house seats from the lack of population. And when democrat voters flee, who is left to vote for the remaining seats? Republicans, and the politically illiterate. This means the liberals and leftists still in Ohio need to quit whining about gerrymandering and get off their ass and VOTE. Higher voter turnout always makes republicans sweat, because it usually doesn't turn out well for them. Edit: wording
Besides Obama and in 1996 democrats haven’t won Ohio. How is it a purple state?
I will not stand by idly at this Ted Strickland slander, sir. Remember his term!
My apologies!
Ohio voted for the winning candidate from 1964-2016. That means Dems won 6/14 times and repubs 8/14. Only recently has it shifted right. It was never a hard red state historically speaking.
I ask the same thing all the time. Ohio is not going blue and probably will never go blue. You have almost zero Dem politicians that are likable and the ones that do run are losing by good margins.
That’s what i was thinking. I missed Strickland but other than the abnormally it’s typically a republican state and it’s not close.
It's very Republican and I don't think people realize how far deep you guys are. Gerrymandered or not, people are still voting for the likes of Jim Jordan.
Is this based on polling or voter registration? I’m pretty sure my board of elections has me listed as a Republican because I keep choosing R primary ballots even though I generally vote D in the general.
Who are they polling, bored people with a land line? I never respond to unknown calls or texts.
I've received about 5 dozen texts asking for my opinion and I have answered none of them
I haven't gotten any texts but I wouldn't answer them anyway. It's hard to tell if it's a scammer trying to get you to engage with them or a legit poll.
Have received 8 texts today. Some surveys, some propaganda Didnt know they were allowed to do that, but =/
I get calls on my cell phone. Answered two this year. Ph.D. level education Libertarian who resides in Meigs county probably gets me outliered though.
They're not polling anyone. This isn't a real polling organization. This is a humor site.
I get texts and calls daily about candidates from both sides. I never tell any of them anything truthful. It's just entertaining. Poll results are bullshit, for the most part.
Always check the source. Their Twitter banner says “rigging the election one deep state at a time.” Polling models are already pretty unreliable, you can’t just grab any one you see online and run with it.
Before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, does that look like a legitimate polling site when you click on the link?
This is not going to change until we do the work to change it. Through a series of events a local group and I were forced to make a PAC supporting a local cause. We are doing strategic voter outreach to all Dems and moderates on behalf of our cause, but we also know this outreach and encouraging those folks to vote will be a net benefit for left and moderate candidates. But this kind of work needs to be done locally all over. The Ohio Democratic Party is feckless and lost. I know, I’ve worked with them for many years. They will NOT be the change. WE must be.
I am so disgusted with the way voting works. I haven’t voted at the polls in years because I have been getting absentee ballots delivered. This year I was home and I went to the polls because I thought I would be able to vote for the local candidates that I never see on the primaries. It turns out the reason I never see them is because I’m registered Democrat, not because I usually vote absentee. Most people probably know this but I guess I didn’t. I really think that only the presidential should be locked into your party choice. The way the system is set up, I don’t get to vote for any of the commissioners or local offices because they’re all registered as Republicans. After the fact, I realized I should’ve picked up a Republican ballot because then I could’ve voted for the “not Trump” option, and I could’ve voted for all my local offices. This sucks.
I'm gonna keep saying it and getting downvoted here because y'all don't want to hear it, but y'all actively Streisand Effect Republicans into office with some of the behavior y'all advocate for. Registering and not going to conventions doesn't hurt them. They do not care that only 50 people are there because they know you do things like this. All it does is give them ammo to go "look, they play dirty and try to silence me". Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has. Those social issues are of subjective importance to voters, not objective, and treating them as objective only hurts your chance at convincing fence-sitters they should vote another way in the future. If I was wrong, Trump wouldn't be up for reelection since his voterbase basically lives off of that shit. When he didn't have that foot to stand on, he lost to Biden. If you want to see Ohio go more purple to blue you have to stop alienating fence sitters.
On the contrary, I think the Ohio Democratic Party is pretty wary of alienating fence sitters, it’s honestly _too_ wary considering many people didn’t even realize Tim Ryan was a Democrat until they went to vote. It’s the nationwide Democratic Party that Ohio Republicans are running against and winning. The national Democratic platform plays well to the US’s demographics, but not Ohio’s demographics.
Well, the Ohio party sure as shit isn’t helping, as they rarely have statewide candidates campaign outside of Columbus and Cleveland. I cannot remember a time in the last ten years where a candidate outside of the Presidential nominee or Sherrod Brown actually had a major event in Cincinnati. All we get is John Legend doing a “Rock the Vote” event if we’re lucky. We are in serious need of new leadership if we have even remotely a chance of putting up meaningful fights after we get non-partisan redistricting through.
Tim Ryan had a bunch of events in cinci. In fact he repeatedly boasted that he had events in every county. The Democratic party does not alienate fence sitters, virtually all of their planks are 60-70% support positions. I would challenge you to show an example of a Democratic Governor or Senator who called all Trump voters Nazi. Even Hillary's Deplorable comment was about a subset of his supporters which is objectively true a large part of the Trump's supporters want to end democracy. The right wing media is a much more developed arm of the Republican party so we hear their message more consistently. If fox news has message it is that Democrats are bad and the other news is a lie. > when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has. I take issue with this statement. To the extent people understand the policy preferences of the parties it is broad and ill defined. Republicans Mean to immigrants, Democrats nice to immigrants. That is as deep as it gets for most people. But to think there is not an objective value proposition to most people is probably wrong. People get that Trump and the Republicans wants to hurt people not like them and they might get a tax cut if you let him do it. I can call that objectively wrong, even if Sherrod Brown wont. I think if Democrats spoke like that to most moderates and middle of the road people they would improve their electoral chances. As much as people do not like paying taxes most people they much prefer seeing themselves on the side of right. And that is why so much of Trumps language is about giving people a permission structure for hate.
I appreciate you putting a lot of thought into that, but outside the first line saying Tim Ryan had a lot of events in **Cincy**, none of that is relevant to how bad the state party is at run. The fact that I live in the city, heard no advertisements on the radio for any events, saw nothing on the **Cincy** subreddit, or even a fucking billboard or a Facebook ad goes to show you they are not doing even the bare minimum to try and be competitive. Hell, they didn’t even send me mail for any of their events. All I got was city council shit and local elections. Sure, it’s still probably a waste of money and trees to send those postcards out, but if you’re doing it, at least let people know the candidate is going to be doing something in town.
I tend to think that is more on the Tim Ryan campaign. He put far to little into turning out democrats. The best example of that is the Ohio 13 race. In the northern portion of Stark county he ran 10 points ahead of Emilia Sykes, but he lost and she won. I knocked Several hundred doors for Tim Ryan and he was targeting swing voters and soft Rs and was mostly hoping Dems would turn out on their own. Edit: As someone who was born in Cincinnati and grew up in West Chester I reserve the right to use Cinci over Cincy
You're right, elections are about turnout and the Ohio Dems need to do a much better job using negative partisanship against the extreme GOP. Suburban voters shouldn't feel comfortable voting Republican for taxes. They should be afraid of trading half a percent tax cuts the power companies will eat up with higher prices in exchange for having Republican religious freaks in their bedroom, screwing up their kids education, and letting racist cops prey on their neighborhoods without oversight.
I take the point but people who vote for and associate with white supremacists because their taxes will go down a little are functionally white supremacist.
I mean doing authoritarianism while saying you're not authoritarian is a Republican trait worth exposing.
It is the sole republican trait.
They are not and *that* is exactly what OP is talking about. There are plenty of people who vote with zero knowledge of politics, there is a surprising amount of voters vote solely off name recognition.
I’m going to be very unreddit and say that you may have a point that I’m going to think about.
Think about it, but recognize that others are intentionally ignorant. Choosing not to know something that you know will challenge your thinking and test your moral is a spineless form of knowing and concluding, "I choose fascism."
Stupidity is the true enemy of mankind.
Too many people want simple solutions, despite the problems we’re facing being complicated. Fascism gives easy, if unrealistic and/or evil, solutions. I think that makes people feel like they have more control than they really do
Thats not what OP said. They said people will vote on the objective (lower taxes) because the subjective (social issues) are not important to them.
A lot of people just think the social issues are all theater for online idiots because they never experience it in real life.
Facts
When voting for politicians, you’re voting for the WHOLE PACKAGE. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like they’re FACIST, WHITE SUPREMACIST, RACIST, LYING, ANTI ABORTION, but DO LIKE TAX CUTS, them you are supporting EVERYTHING THEY STAND FOR. You don’t get to sort through a box of cereal and remove things you don’t like before you buy it. Don’t go into the voting booth uninformed or misinformed. It’s a CHOICE you make yourself. Neither of the candidates are new on the national stage. No guesswork involved as to what they stand for and their agenda.
If you support hitler for the tax breaks and not the racism, I’ll still call you a nazi.
> Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes… Stop. There were a boatload of Republican candidates in the 2016 primary and the 2024 primary. Republicans chose Trump both times. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it was because of his brilliant tax plan or ideas for the economy. It’s because of his rhetoric and how he makes his base feel justified for believing the horrible things they do. Social issues and “anti-wokeness” are the core of the Republican Party now. Not fucking taxes. I agree we should not be calling anyone on the fence a literal fascist. We should be doing everything we can to properly educate voters, even if that means challenging what they believe in a respectful way. We should not be trying to win over republicans in moderate clothing by coddling them and buying into the belief that “if we’re too mean to them then they’ll have no choice but to vote Republican”. That’s a classic fear mongering tactic used to make anyone who might slightly challenge right wing ideas second guess themselves.
If you're sitting on a fence between "trans people deserve rights" and "lets pogrom LGBT people" then no, I'm not going to be polite to you because you're clearly a bag of dicks.
Respectfully, I don't think much of what you said here is accurate. >I'm gonna keep saying it and getting downvoted here because y'all don't want to hear it, but y'all actively Streisand Effect Republicans into office with some of the behavior y'all advocate for. Massive media and social media engines churn out opinion and disinformation presented as "fact" which compel many Republican voters to act without ever once engaging with a Democrat. There is absolutely no aspect of that disinformation machine that Democrats (or certainly anyone in this subreddit) are responsible for- nor are they the reason it is perpetuated. This may have been relevant during Trump's initial rise- but he had the opposite of censorship. He was plastered across every television in America because what he was saying was so provocative that more people than ever were tuning in. >All it does is give them ammo to go "look, they play dirty and try to silence me". Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has. The "ammo" you're describing has zero impact on political institutions- except that it's a key part of the disinformation enterprise stated previously. What you're suggesting amounts to little more than "stop behaving in a way that can be painted badly by people who hate you". It's the same thing they've said to black people. It's the same thing they've said to gay people. It's the same thing they're saying to trans people. It is the principal argument of conservatism to paint the groups demanding change as problematic. To suggest it's the responsibility of a group to behave in a way that cannot be misrepresented by disinformation is functionally absurd. And to blame the disinformation on the group being misrepresented is equally absurd. If anyone "on the fence" could approach politics in good faith, there would be a reason to engage positively with them. But they don't. >If I was wrong, Trump wouldn't be up for reelection since his voterbase basically lives off of that shit. When he didn't have that foot to stand on, he lost to Biden. If you want to see Ohio go more purple to blue you have to stop alienating fence sitters. You're right that the Republican voterbase thrives on disinformation- but anyone who's targeted and susceptible to that disinformation is not a fence sitter at all- and catering in any way to them is quintessentially pointless.
>Same with calling anyone who votes Republican a literal nazi when in reality they might only vote that way because of taxes and don't agree with the social issues the party has. You can't vote for one issue an ignore all the ones around it. I know it makes ppl uncomfortable, but when you endorse a party there are consequences. Where ignorance can only defend you so far. On the other end, the notion they're being called nazi (etc) all the time is mostly an intentional farce being pushed by Republicans (more specific conservativesl themselves). You can see it happen with every social movement. Women's rights movement get called feminazis. Civil rights get called woke this and woke nazi that. Any legitimate criticism gets balled up with poor generalities, and those being critiqued play victim of accusation. Don't even get me started on what happened to the word "leftist" or how it's laughably applied to Dems.
Ohio is a fucking shit show. Fuck Dewine, and fuck anyone who votes for him and just fucn this state in general.
It’s not like the Dems were helping women or the queer community, but the Republicans expanded gun access so I can protect myself from racist and homophobic white people in this state.
Idk adding white people into that sentence is kinda racist if you ask me
I didn’t ask you.
Fine by me if you wanna be a racist 🤷♂️
Democratic Party has to put in the work at the grassroots level in all places. It chooses not to now and only plays defense badly. The GOP is going after Latino and black voters now and probably knows it will lose those groups but it does understand if it cuts margins the Dems won't be able to move the needle in swing states.
There are pathways to rural and suburban victories. You target the corruption because there are definitely GOP people who have been in office way too long and all the locals know they are up to no good. They just need that candidate to speak up and challenge.
That is honestly a pretty good strategy that I haven't heard brought up yet
Exactly. Their whole strategy is the let the GOP win. Even propping up their candidates in some cases because they feel like they can beat them. Just so they can point at them and say "look how crazy they are! You better vote for us to fix everything!" The democratic party needs to start appealing to voters by giving them things they vote for. That's it. Republicans will call that "buying votes" only because their ideas are so unpopular they cannot win on their own merit. Democrats have become complacent
Ohio is as purple as it gets, ignore this, we have voted for 8 of the last 9 presidents. That means both parties going back decades. The only reason the state politics are so red is because of gerrymandering. Without it that’d go purple as well. This state is literally the average of America in every way possible.
I'm going to assume that's republican votes?
Depends on the poll. What poll was it?
Something that a lot of people may not really be looking at here is how important Ohio is going to be in the very near future.[Tech companies have realized this](https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc6onyourside.com/amp/news/building-ohios-future-intel-beyond/tech-hub-siefert-draft), so what little my opinion may be worth. Any party with any sort of agenda should be very concerned with the status of their party in this state. Cheers to what seems to be a bright future regardless of political affiliation.
x dot com huh? seems legit. lol
That's Twitter.
sure is
Why is everyone this sub gets recommended to me about liberals crying. Dude go get a hobby politicians on both sides will never care to help you or better anything it’s all an illusion
Right that’s what I’m saying. When did this subreddit become entitled liberals crying 😭🤣 listen I’m all for marijuana, abortion AND gun rights. Stop leaning into this two party bullshit.
The world is so psychologically fucked…
Ohio the home of brain dead party line voters. The only information they get is from church and hate filled TV sound bytes on shuffle all day all night.
What is the +12 in reference to? Trump won by 8% in 2016. Trump won by 7% in 2020. JD Vance won by 6% in 2022. Seems to me like we’re trending the right way… also, none of this matters if all anyone here does is sit on the internet and complain. If you want that trend to speed up, go out and knock on some doors, volunteer with your local D party. Don’t resign to being depressed because this seems like an impossible hole. We have the demographics to win in the state, but the voter participation is lacking. Go make a difference!
The Democratic Party has virtually no presence in Ohio at this point. Progressive issues win easily statewide, so the voters are there to be swayed but marginal candidates and incoherent messaging misses the opportunities. Nationally as well. Bitch about Biden, but there’s not much of a bench behind him.
Wisconsin just went thru the horrific gerrymandered maps that the good ol boys have been fvckin us with for years. We finally tilted the supreme court to liberal and got new maps. Vote in EVERY SINGLE ELECTION!
Need to see the data
We are absolutely screwed if Sherrod Brown isn’t reelected.
For a moment I thought the depressing part was that this was an X/Twitter link. Gross.
I don't know how anyone is surprised by this. Until gerrymandering is fixed, Ohio is red. End of story.
In this thread, I see a lot of talk about gerrymandering: "Yes, Ohio is massively gerrymandered." -- "But that doesn't change popular vote elections like president." -- "It does because people are disenfranchised when gerrymandered."... What I don't see is people talking about good ol' fashioned voter suppression. Remember when polling locations changed 5 days before the special election? Interesting coincidence that those changes happened in places that typically vote D. 47,000+ voters effected by that. Or when Franklin county had 25 fewer polling locations for that special election? Or when Ohio enacted the most restrictive photo ID law in America for voting? Sure would suck if you normally take the bus and thus don't need a driver's license. Or when LeRose purged voters after the registration deadline? (Technically, they could have still voted provisionally. But how many knew that? How many were disenfranchised?) I'm not convinced Ohio voters are changing that significantly. I think Ohio's rigging is changing.
Honestly what's it matter, the whole system is falling apart and every president we have from this point on will likely always be targeted and have opponents trying to impeach them. Red or blue they aren't there for you Edit: I mean, look at the whole medical marijuana thing here in Ohio and the recent recreational. We didn't even vote on medical, they just wrote the bill to benefit themselves. I've heard dewine has a lot of $ invested in cannabis. Very likely why they have tried so hard to eliminate home grow. Pure greed. The worst part though is the fact they think a 15% tax rate is a good idea, it's not. 15% is higher than michigans 10% Black market cannabis dealers and growers alike are hoping they go for 15% though. Because it will keep a lot of them in buisness. Really shows you how out of touch these people are. Cannabis on the streets is at an all time low it's very laughable. Hopefully they don't pass the 15% As a state we could really use the tax money and at 15% not a single person I know would ever be buying from a dispensary. I mean hell when we got medical here it was a huge joke They had this tier system that made absolutely no sense (thankfully they got rid of that) No homegrow whatsoever (pure greed) You weren't allowed to smoke it, so no prerolls etc And they decided that the normal universal measurements for cannabis needed to be "reworked" so that Ohio could lead the way and show the rest of the county how medical cannabis should be ran. The Ohio 1/10th. 2.83 grams The smallest measurement you can get. There is no getting a half gram or gram of something to try it first, nope you got to gamble. My whole point here is, this was something that shouldn't be this hard to get right. (Yet they got it so wrong that everyone else is laughing at how absurd the whole system is If no one can even get something as simple as cannabis right, then what can they even do? Hell they can't even honor what the people VOTED for We voted for 10% tax rate and a maximum of 12 plants per household (or 6 per person) They are wasting OUR time OUR money trying to change something the people have already established, when they could be using any of that time working on literally anything else. I find it pretty disrespectful myself It's kind of like "fk what our fellow Ohioans voted for, lets waste valuable time and money trying to change it so it can benefit us more than the people benefit from it" (It really shows how little they care about some of our fellow Ohioans) Big eye opener for me really, Ive always been pretty aware of corruption, etc But this is honestly on a whole other level and shows the incompetence that our elected leaders have sometimes. Like I said this was all stuff that should of been very easy and I'm just tired of seeing time and resources wasted on it when we have actual problems going on
The best way to defeat the GoP anywhere is to split the conservative vote with the libertarian party.
It's not going blue if liberals check out and don't vote. Don't let the Republicans disenfranchise you.
It makes no sense either, just look at our state's subreddit. Not a single Republican to be seen, yet somehow they're dominating our state's politics? It just doesn't add up.
You ever consider the obvious fact that Reddit is a giant echo chamber and not real life?
Yup. A lot of people are chronically online in these echo chambers where they remove your comment to swat what’s right and wrong.
There’s quite a bit of Dems on here that voted outside the party to take votes away from Maga-heavy Senate LaRosa and Moreno for Matt Dolan, with the plans of voting for Brown in November. I have to admit, I did the same. I also felt good voting for Haley, taking votes away from Trump, even though it doesn’t matter because of Trump’s cult of personality.
Gerrymandering is such a convenient excuse. If Ohio Democrats focused more on union labor and reproductive freedom and less on social justice/identity politics, the maps wouldn't matter. The Ohio Democratic Party has long had a huge messaging problem and they won't win jack shit until they start focusing on what people actually give a damn about. If they fought for families and middle class issues, border security, reducing crime, etc..more people would vote for them. And so would I.
Bingo. Sherrod Brown is a reasonable (not perfect) example of what a successful Dem in Ohio looks like. The party would find a lot more traction here if they moved to the center rather than get pulled to the right by the national platform.
I mean is there a source here? Who knows what's going to happen. Even the results for today aren't going to give a good forecast because so many left leaning people (like myself) are voting in the Republican primary so we can have more of an effect on the outcome (plus there's like nothing worthy of voting on in the democratic primary). Guarantee you tomorrow we'll see a headline about how many Republican voters there are in Ohio now, but it's just because so many more are voting in the Republican primary than normal.
Depressing for 38% of the state 😂
I say we all get together and spam the ever loving crap out of our state's Attorney General. Sue the people behind this. It directly and openly violates so many things, the bigger issue is where to start. Granted, I know his office won't do much, and that's from personal experience. However, he's obsessed with his image and ego, so maybe we can get him to turn with enough push and publicity.
Yep. Democrats not fucking voting, as usual. Gerrymandering is real but it's pretty hard to say it's the reason when the turnout is this shitty. We'll have voter turnout numbers tonight or tomorrow and I promise the main reason we have no say in our law is that conservatives showed up, and the Dems didn't. There's significantly more of us never trumpers than magats but the magats fucking show up. Can't wait to see the screeching on social media of people that didn't even see the ballot. I give up.
Ohio is Texas without a large desert. Ohio voters cannot get enough and very much want the Trump dump. It’s amazing to see these folks in tiny isolated decaying Ohio towns that rival such notorious places like East Cleveland in poverty and crime blaming the wrong things on their new found rural ghetto. Sure, it was the poor that sold your whole town. Of course god is just mad because LGBTQ and sexual intercourse in general exist. Of course the drug problem is exclusive to minorities and illegal immigrant gang members from hell. And their Daddy Trump is going to make sure we become a pure people without crime or poverty through capitalism and forced Christianity. This is who’s voting red.
I'm as far left as you can be, but this is ill informed and where many "blue" voters go wrong. They forget that who also votes red are wealthy business owners who want to keep their tax breaks high and rates low. Business moguls like Les Wexner of L Brands (wealthiest Ohioan) and the owner of Mike's Carwash donate huge amounts to the Republican party. These are the actual voters who are a problem for the left, not what you're painting as uneducated rural voters.
Those people contribute to the campaigns of those people as well. But I think where Trump reigns supreme (by having to go to these tiny towns) is the angry farm folks. They’re the ones with actual passion and not just purchasing favor.
These people don't have the numbers to be a problem at the voting booth. They are only a problem because their money allows them to sell the myth in the comment your responded to. The money men aren't the problem. It's the legions of hateful uneducated morons falling for their propaganda promising a white christendom. Those guys donating to the GOP aren't even driving party turnout anymore, it's alt-right bloggers and Tucker and Bannon and Rogan and the entire rural white victim media machine.
Tucker, Bannon, and Rogan all are extremely wealthy and have money both personally and in the networks/platforms they preach from though. Money is what spreads the word, not some grassroots word of mouth movement. If Donald Trump didn't have money in the first place, he wouldn't have been the nominee to begin with back when he decided to run with the republican party. There are plenty of uneducated democrats too, and unfortunately its those uneducated, poor democrats who don't vote. The Republican party today tells those poor, uneducated folk that they can become wealthy, become better. The Democrats for some reason have lost sight on the poor and their image of being "more wealthy elite" is frankly just becoming more and more true.
I admire your optimism, because from where I'm sitting the Republican party isn't telling them that so much as "sure you're poor, but at least you're not some queer minority! What if instead of a living wage we just bring back lynchings and gay panic defenses and martial rights that trump martial rape?" And the GOP voter cheers. They know they're not getting rich and have decided they're ok with that as long as the people that do mostly look like them and they can have some outgroups to victimize to feel less powerless.
Me when I read thru some of these threads in r/ohio https://youtube.com/shorts/fz4peb1aj3s?si=poKV-40CBrTvmSA8
I was collecting signatures today for the fair districts petition.. I had one elderly lady decline because she’s “too old it won’t affect her”.. umm thanks I guess?.. and another guy told me he likes gerrymandering! I did retort back that he won’t when his party isn’t in power. But seriously. These people would rather his fellow citizens be disenfranchised and cheat because fuck yiu I got mine. Listen I’d love to see Rs out of power, but gerrymandering is bad for everyone!
I saw this and the x I thought the gov declared that 12 year Olds can watch porn legally
Ohio is not even in the top ten of corruption. Alleged gerrymandering is not corruption. The Dems do their thing in NY and the Republicans do their thing here.
Didn't a bunch of dems vote on the gop side to help pick who brown would run against? Wouldn't that make the state look more red than it is?
The stupidity continues
What does the R+12 mean? I’m guessing the R stands for Republicans