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Mansfield
News Journal
Presidential
barometer
Ottawa County usually votes in
favor of winning candidate
Written by Benjamin Lanka
Oct
26, 2012
Political
pundits are spending
millions of dollars throughout the country trying to determine who will
win
this year’s presidential election.
They
might just want to knock on a
few doors in Ottawa County.
The
small county on the coast of
Lake Erie represents the best indicator of one of the country’s most
critical
swing states states when it comes to presidential politics. In fact, it
has
correctly chosen the presidential candidate to win Ohio since 1944, the
longest
streak in the state.
The
county of 41,000 people was one
of only six Ohio counties to side with President Obama in 2008 and
George W.
Bush in 2004. According to data from the Ohio Secretary of State and
Columbus
Dispatch political archives, Ottawa County’s streak of success dates
back 68
years.
“It’s
not actually magic. It’s
really demographics,” said Melissa Miller, associate professor of
political
science at Bowling Green State University.
The
counties surrounding Toledo and
Lucas County have generally been good predictors of presidential
politics. Wood
County to the west of Ottawa County has picked the Ohio winner in 15 of
the
last 17 elections, and Sandusky County to the south has done the same
in 14 of
those elections.
Miller
said those areas have a good
mix of suburban communities, small towns and rural areas, making it
almost a
microcosm of the state, sans a major urban center. Ottawa County
includes Port
Clinton, a city of 6,000 people, long stretches of coastline along Lake
Erie
and the Sandusky Bay, islands like Put-in-Bay and large areas of rural
land to
the west.
The
analysis by CentralOhio.com
looked at counties that picked the candidate to win Ohio, not
necessarily the
presidency. Although Ohio has been a good barometer for the nation, it
isn’t
perfect. For example, Ottawa County voted for Richard Nixon in 1960
when he won
Ohio, but lost to John F. Kennedy nationwide.
Read
the rest of the article at Mansfield News
Journal
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