In spite of this trying presidential election, love has kept Tim Modzelewski and Marie Lacey together.
The couple spent Election Day outside a polling place at the Tallmadge Recreational Center.
Modzelewski, who left work early to vote, circled the parking lot all afternoon with a stack of Republican slate cards and a Trump-Pence yard sign above his head. Less enthused, Lacey leaned against their car with her head buried in a cell phone as pickup truck drivers honked their horns to support her boyfriend, the loudest Donald Trump fan in earshot.
“I’m not real happy about that,” Lacey said, shaking her head. “I voted today, but I’m not a Trump supporter. So I’ll let you figure that out.”
Nasty, tumultuous, long, wild, divisive. The 2016 presidential election has been called many things.
And, now, many are elated to call it over.
“I am thrilled this is the end of the election,” said Lacey. “We’re all going to live through this no matter who wins. The country will go on. We’re all going to be unhappy at some point with somebody’s politics, with their judgement or what they do.”
“We’re going to get through it and we’ll be fine.”
Bellwether no more?
Trump ran the tables in Ohio, where he campaigned hard and often, showing that frequent visits and massive rallies could persuade voters more than the hundreds of millions of dollars in ads the Clinton campaign spent here.
The populist Trump said he would campaign in Democratic strongholds. And he did, with impressive results.
In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney took 71 Ohio counties, improving on the 66 counties Sen. John McCain took in 2008.
Trump has outdone them both. He swept 80 counties Tuesday, flipping Portage, Stark, Trumbull, Lorain and five other counties that Obama won in 2012. Montgomery, were Trump was leading late into the evening, was too close to call.
With the utmost importance in deciding national elections, Ohio awoke Tuesday with an impressive record of picking the winner in all but two presidential elections dating back to 1896. No Republican has ever lost here and went on to win the White House. The national race was too close to call by the time the Beacon Journal went to press.
There was concern leading up to the election that Ohio’s bellwether status might be slipping because of Trump’s strong showing here while Clinton looked to be the clear victor in national polling, as well as Ohio’s lack of diversity compared to the nation.
Political historians like Kyle Kondik of the Center for Politics at University of Virginia still considered Ohio the “crystal ball” to which America’s political pundits look for answers.
But the country, on the whole, is diversifying faster than Ohio. And Ohio’s abundance of white, non-college educated, blue-collar workers — fed up with career politicians and stuck in 15 years of wage stagnation — are finally and for the first time turning to a Republican for answers.
“I never voted Republican before this primary. I voted for Trump so [Gov. John] Kasich wouldn’t get it, but he got it anyway,” said Modzelewski, a 54-year-old textile factory worker who last campaigned for a candidate in 1992 when Bill Clinton first ran for president. “Trump’s enthusiasm to fix the system as an outsider really attracted me.”
In all, Trump grabbed more than 2.7 million votes in Ohio, about 52 percent of the vote. Because Trump took more than half the votes in the unofficial and preliminary results, third-party candidates were not a factor in Clinton’s demise, at leat here.
How we voted
Men went big for Trump, as expected. He also did well with suburban voters,
CNN reported that exit polls showed 41 percent of Trump’s support came from non-college educated whites, “greater than in many other states.”
Women preferred Clinton.
Lacey, 46, said she couldn’t stand how Trump talked about — or said he treated — women, gays, lesbians and minorities throughout the campaign.
“Just deplorable,” she said of Trump’s behavior. “In my heart, I don’t think he’s the right person to represent this country to the world.”
Exit polling by MSNBC showed female voters flocking to Clinton. In 2012, Obama beat Romney by 26 percentage points with women. In 2016, Clinton expanded that gap to 36 points.
In re-writing the folly of the 2016 election, Republicans can save time updating the advice the party gave itself, and didn’t listen to, back in 2013 after Latinos and young voters rejected Romney. There may now be some damage control to consider with women.
“The Republican Party could write a similar report to that of 2012,” said Danielle Sarver Coombs, a Kent State journalism and communications professor with a keen interest in writing books about Republicans and elections.
More diverse, embrace Latinos. Clearly that has not been what’s happened here when you see record numbers of Latinos come out in Florida.
Danielle Sarver Coombs, a
Women voted
Party politics also factored into how Ohioans cast their ballots.
CNN exit polls showed that of the 53 percent of voters who gave a favorable opinion of Kasich, only 39 percent supported Trump. This follows Kasich’s decision to cast an anti-Trump protest vote for Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee eight years ago, not this election.
But countering blowback from Kasich fans was the surge of voters who supported the state’s top Republican on the ballot: Sen. Rob Portman, who walloped former Gov. Ted Strickland to hold his Senate seat.
To the bitter end
Political prognosticators poured over an electoral map highlighting the most critical states.
Michigan would be a nail in the coffin for a Trump victory. North Carolina would clinch the presidency for Clinton.
And Ohio, along with North Carolina: the first truly battleground state to finish voting.
In a room with mostly empty chairs and five white guys with cell phones, James from Cuyahoga Falls (no last name because he doesn’t “trust the media”) was well aware of the narrow path Trump must navigate to win.
“He has to run the gantlet on it. He has to run all the battleground states. But right now, we’re looking at the polls and I believe Trump is up in Florida, New Hampshire and Ohio,” said James, who sat in the Summit County Trump headquarters, which the campaign has shared with local candidates. James dialed another voter’s number and left another message. Then he started making calls in Nevada where polls would not close for another 150 minutes.
Across the street in Wallhaven, three black women greeted a Beacon Journal reporter who walked in five minutes before Ohio polls closed at 7:30 p.m. A tight-lipped but jovial staffer tried shooing the reporter out of the office, but volunteer Jacquline Debose spoke freely about what the Clinton campaign has been up to as the clock wound down to zero.
“Canvassing,” Debose said.
Along with calling voters, Debose served as the phone operator for an Uber-esque army of 30 volunteers drivers who dropped more than 100 voters off at the polls Tuesday.
“You got to be on the ground,” Debose said, checking her phone for that last call of the night.
Republican Donald Trump won Ohio’s presidential election on Tuesday with solid support from white voters without college degrees and those who think the economy is in bad shape, exit poll results showed.
He won among white men and did better among voters in union households than most Republicans have in past presidential years. Democrat Hillary Clinton was the choice among those who wanted someone in the White House with experience while Trump was the favorite of those looking for someone who would bring change.
Here are some highlights of the exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research:
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WHY HE WON
Angst over the economy drove the vote Trump’s way in Ohio. More than half of the state’s voters thought the nation’s economy was not doing well and two-thirds backed Trump. He also won 3 out of 5 whites without college degrees. He also managed to erode one of the state’s strongest Democratic voting blocs, union households. They split their vote between Trump and Clinton after giving Democratic President Barack Obama 3 out of 5 votes just four years ago.
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TRUMP’S STRENGTHS
The state’s suburbs, where the bulk of Ohio’s voters live, went for Trump. White evangelicals backed him by a wide margin along with those who say immigration is the biggest issue facing the country. He also had an edge among middle- and upper-income voters.
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CLINTON’S STRENGTHS
Women and minorities backed Clinton, but not by big enough margins to negate Trump’s solid showing among white voters, especially men. Young voters tilted toward Clinton. So did those who give Obama a passing grade.
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WORRIES ABOUT BOTH
Clinton’s handling of classified emails while she was secretary of state was a concern for about two-thirds of the voters in Ohio while slightly more were bothered by Trump’s treatment of women.
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NONE OF THE ABOVE
There’s been a lot of talk about how voters aren’t satisfied with the two candidates, and very few had a favorable opinion of both or thought both were qualified for the office. About 3 in 10 thought neither of them is honest and trustworthy.
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KASICH FACTOR
Republican Gov. John Kasich, who made a run for the White House, was favorably viewed among about half of the voters. Voters who liked the governor titled toward Clinton while those who had a negative opinion leaned toward Trump.
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STILL THE ECONOMY
The economy was again at the top of most voters’ thoughts, with half saying it’s the most important issue facing the country. Worries about terrorism ranked a distant second. While most had a dim view of the nation’s economy, more thought their own financial situation was better or the same compared with four years ago.
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MAKE UP YOUR MIND
With a barrage of campaign ads and candidate visits to Ohio, voters couldn’t avoid talking and thinking about the election. Three-quarters had their decision made before the final month of the campaign, but about 1 in 10 waited until the final days to settle on their choice.
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The survey of 3,397 Ohio voters was conducted for AP and the television networks by Edison Research. This includes preliminary results from interviews conducted as voters left a random sample of 50 precincts statewide Tuesday and 620 who voted early or absentee and were interviewed by landline or cellular telephone from Oct. 28 through Nov. 6. Results for the full sample were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, greater for subgroups.
On this election day,
Through the years, though, I’ve seen so much corruption. And it’s got to this point where I believe in Donald Trump’s message. An it’s sad that it took somebody from the outside ... to try to fix the system.”
But the implications have just begun.
XXXX will (SCOTUS, work with CONGRESS .. is it split? ... reform immigration, address untenable spending on entitlement programs for the sick and elderly,
“I’m hoping that we will be able to move back toward civility and being able to govern, but that may be difficult with the divisive rhetoric in this election,” said Danielle Sarver Coombs, a Kent State professor and political author.
But the implications on the political parties, especially here in Ohio, may have enduring ramifications.
Party is over
Ohio
Coombs spent Election Day “compulsively flipping back and forth between FiveThirtyEight and Votecastr,” she said.
I think there’s a couple pieces, how we move forward will be dictated by what happens tonight.
Trump lawsuit in Nevada by polls
If this goes on and drags out, that wuill make it even harded to move forawrad as a society.
Trump loss -- How do we move forward when the country has elected another president?
McCain already blocking SCOTUS confirmation.
I think that’s kind of the million dollar question for R. There’s clearly a divided between DT and the Rep establishment, just look at Paul Ryan and John Kasich.
If they want to keep those voters, they’ll have to decide what the party should look like 10 years from now.
DEM Bernie and his impact.. Particularly millennials felt his message had real currency. Reinforced Clinton’s progressivism. The Elizabeth Warrens and Bernie Sanders have constituencies to hold her honest.
The speculation is that people like her when she’s working, not trying to get a promotion.
Coombs did exit polling in 2004.
I know how much efort we put into getting samples right. Sees good reason to embargo the exit polls. Sometimes the rush to be first is that your giving inaccurate information. So I think it will be interesting to see how much currency this Votecastr gets.
“compulsively flipping between 538 and Votecastr”
Big data took a big leap in 2016, charting a course for how exit polling and voting results might be reported in elections to come.
Throughout Election Day, Coombs found herself “compulsively flipping” between two websites.
The first, FiveThirtyEight, is run by Nate Silver, an analytical whiz whose ability to predict sports scores was employed on the 2008 election to successfully call 49 of 50 states.
Silver’s website,
The second is Votecastr, which has the potential to influence the outcome of elections by letting the public know who’s winning, in real time. “I’d be real interested to see how accurate it is once the polls close,” said Coombs, who understands why newspapers have never before reported real-time exit polling on elections.
As voters left the polls Tuesday or during early voting in the past month, surveyors asked them how they voted and gathered information on income, age and other demographics. For decades, this information has allowed news organizations that pay for the data to accurate call
The idea is that if voters think their candidate is losing, they may not bother to vote. This happened in 1980 when Jimmy Carter, aware of the results on the East Coast, gave a concession speech to Ronald Reagan before the polls closed on the West Coast, where Democratic candidates watched supporters through up their hands and forgo voting.
Conversely, if voters think the race is tight — as Votecastr reported all day in Stark County — they might rush the polls knowing that a single vote could pack more punch.
As the polls closed, Votecastr
Ohio bellwether status:
Ohio has picked the winner in presidential election in 28 of the last 30 contests.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .