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Comment by reducesuffering | Hacker News Reader

Ohio still had +8% (53-45) for Republicans in the last presidential election. You're acting like Democrat voters are a majority held back by the legislature, but the presidential election isn't affected by gerrymandering. All of their more recent elections had an even starker difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Ohio_elections

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I will point out that while you can't gerrymander a state-wide race, if you gerrymander enough other races, you can both actively-and-illegally, and passively-and-legally suppress voter turnout among people opposed to single-party rule.

But at this point, you are right - Ohio can safely be written off, like Florida.

Florida isn't a write off, it had a 3.4% margin and is worth a fight for it's outsized electoral votes.

> Ohio can safely be written off, like Florida.

So are you for or against single-party rule? The way you're putting this makes it clear that you think there is one right party to vote for.

>But at this point, you are right - Ohio can safely be written off, like Florida.

Legalizing cannabis and abortion choice in the most recent election clearly indicates otherwise.

If you ask an American whether or not they want a Democrat, or a Repulbican policy, Americans will overwhelmingly support the Democrat policies.

... And then they go to the polls and vote for Republicans who implement the exact opposite (Because they are only listening to their base, and their base is insane.)

I am not in Ohio, though the Republicans I know who are <60 years old do support MJ decriminalization.

I don't think it does. Pre-Trump, Ohio clearly had a large share of traditional conservative voters and leaders. However, when Trump came in and captured a ton of rust-belt Democrat support for Republicans, a lot of those traditional values did not come with the new support. That, and an aging boomer population being replaced with Gen X, Millenials, and Gen Z that hold much different beliefs on abortion and marijuana.

He's saying that Ohio's gerrymandering ensures that the hard right (MAGA) punches above its weight. He's saying that in Ohio, voters are politically closer to Kasich whereas the legislature is still firmly Householder.

Ohio is very clearly a red state these days. Once Trump came in, he captured a lot of blue-collar democrats and they are now fully Republican. The gerrymandering just tilts the scales significantly more to ever overcome that majority. There is a big difference between the 8% win in 2020 and the 66% Republican majority in the Ohio house and 79% Republican majority in the Ohio senate.

FYI, Ohio just put Abortion into their constitution and legalized weed weeks ago. So I wouldn't count it as 'Fully republican" just yet. Although if that +8 holds for the 2024 election, I would concede this point.

> Ohio is very clearly a red state these days

Ohio’s margins are exceeded by its non-voters in multiples. (Half a million [1] versus three million.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

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