1.6 million ballots have now been cast in Ohio: 3 takeaways from the state's early voting data

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Posted on 10/27/2024 8:05:27 PM PDT by 11th_VA

COLUMBUS, Ohio — With just a little over a week to go until Election Day, Ohio has now seen 1.6 million ballots cast in the 2024 election as of Sunday evening.

Here are three takeaways from the data released by the Ohio Secretary of State's Office about who has already cast their vote across the state.

1. Ohio sees robust Republican strength in the early vote

The most immediate takeaway that is inescapable to avoid when looking at Ohio's early voting data is how much stronger the Republican vote is over Democrats in the state. As of Sunday evening, the Ohio Secretary of State's Office recorded 1,637,003 ballots cast statewide. Of these, just under half (786,422) are by voters who are unaffiliated with either party, meaning they did not vote in a recent party primary. Meanwhile, 503,437 Republican-affiliated voters cast ballots in the state, while 341,046 Democratic-affiliated voters cast ballots.

However, it is still impossible to conclude too much of a substantial nature who would be leading in any of the state's races, as there is no data given about who any of the voters in these three groups cast ballots for. Republican primary voters also routinely have greatly outnumbered Democratic primary voters in the state in all of the state's most recent primary elections. And Democratic candidate support usually winds up being greater in general elections than recent primary participant numbers alone would indicate in the state. Still, if you take only the partisan voters in the state, Republicans make up 59.6% of the early vote, while Democrats make up 40.4%

While no election results can be gleaned from this data, at least one conclusion can be drawn: After Democratic-affiliated voters swamped the early vote in Ohio in 2020, Republican-affiliated voters appeared to overcome their prior aversion to early voting in 2024.

2. Democrats see strength in swing counties and prior northeastern party strongholds.

Although registered Republicans significantly lead the statewide vote over registered Democrats, drilling down county by county reveals a surprising picture: Democrats are leading the vote in most of the state's swing counties, as well as prior Democratic strongholds in the northeastern part of the state that once upon a time made Ohio a swing state on the presidential level.

Democrats are leading the early vote over Republicans in all seven counties that Joe Biden won in 2020. This includes Hamilton, Franklin, Cuyahoga, Lucas, Montgomery, Summit, and Athens counties, six of which make up the state's most populous counties.

However, Democrats are also slightly leading in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, two counties Trump won in 2020, and are practically even with (though slightly behind) Republicans in Lorain County.

Mahoning County is home to Youngstown. Trumbull County is home to Warren, and is immediately north of Mahoning County. Both of these counties, along with Lorain County, a suburban county just outside of Cleveland, overwhelmingly backed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, before voting for Donald Trump in 2020. Only Trumbull County twice supported Donald Trump, while both Mahoning and Lorain County supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by extremely narrow margins in 2016.

This would appear to indicate that even though Democrats are showing more enthusiasm for early voting in the most populous counties across Ohio and in the counties expected to be closest in 2024 for the presidential and Senate races, Republican enthusiasm in more rural and red-leaning counties still manages to overcome this margin.

3. Voters aged 65+ make up almost half the vote

While the Secretary of State's Office does not release much data about voter demographics, the age of voters is one all-important demographic that does get released by the state. And the voters who have shown up so far are substantially older than Ohio's median age of 39.9.

As of Sunday evening, voters over the age of 65 returned 789,085 ballots. Meanwhile, voters under the age of 65 returned 847,918 ballots. This means that 48.2% of voters who have cast ballots so far are over the age of 65, while 51.8% of voters who have cast ballots are under the age of 65.

And polls would indicate that voters over the age of 65 are just about evenly split. A recent New York Times poll of likely electorate indicates that 49% of voters in this age demographic said that they will be supporting Harris, while 48% of these voters said that they will be supporting Trump.

For all the attention that campaigns have gotten over their attempt to court younger voters, the data would indicate that older voters still remain far more reliable voters, a trend that is not unique to this presidential election. However, this focus on campaigns by younger voters is not without good reason.

In the same New York Times poll, voters between the ages of 45-64 said that they will be supporting Trump over Harris by seven percentage points. However, voters between the ages of 30-44 said that they will be supporting Harris over Trump by five percentage points. And voters between the ages of 18-29 said that they will be supporting Harris over Trump by 14 percentage points.

The takeaway from this would appear to indicate that voters under the age of 65 will be the ones to decide this election. Older voters are more evenly split than younger voters, who differ in their views depending on the specific generation they are part of. In short, the more millennials and Gen. Zers who come out to vote over the next week would appear to benefit Harris, while the more Gen. Xers who come out to vote would appear to benefit Trump.

Since Republican Rural voters are overcoming Suburban Democrats, and this is new, it suggests the GOP is successfully getting low propensity voters to the polls - I’m optimistic

1 posted on 10/27/2024 8:05:27 PM PDT by 11th_VA

To: 11th_VA

2 posted on 10/27/2024 8:13:09 PM PDT by DIRTYSECRET

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