Axios Columbus reports that voter turnout in the November 5 general election decreased in Franklin and surrounding counties in the metro Columbus area.
While that is the case, overall turnout isn’t very illuminating compared with the number of raw votes cast across each of former President Donald Trump’s contests with unmotivating Democrats.
A deeper look at the numbers shows that Franklin County and surrounding counties’ turnout is down, but the partisan head count is dropping mainly on the side of Democrats.
From Axios:
Franklin County turnout dropped to just 66% of registered voters, down from 72% in 2020 and 70% in 2016.
Turnout fell in Franklin and every surrounding county (Delaware, Fairfield, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union) by an average of 3.2%.
That’s where the numbers get interesting. While overall turnout was down in metro-Columbus’ surrounding counties, the number of ballots cast for Trump was up. Fairfield and Licking Counties showed modest gains, but Trump improved in Pickaway County by 2.65% from 2020 and Madison County by 4.36%.
Trump got 3.9% more votes than his 2020 result in Delaware County, where Democrats increased on their 2020 result. Democrats netted 4.2% more than in 2020 in Delaware County but remarkably improved in 2020 in growing Marysville/Union County by 12%, where Trump improved by 8.2% more votes than in 2020.
One county over from metro-Columbus’ surrounds in Clark County, home of Springfield, which notoriously shot to fame amidst a swell of 20,000 migrants from Haiti, Trump improved modestly, while Harris lost 12% of the 2020 headcount.
In other words, exurbs and bedroom communities like Marysville helped Democrats improve local results, but Columbus’ red surrounding counties increased turnout for Trump while Democrats lost out, but not as strikingly as in urban counties.
As for Columbus and Franklin County itself, Harris helped Democrats shed a whopping 40,000 votes, down over 10% from 2020, whereas Trump only shed fewer than 3% in Franklin County.
Columbus exemplified a trend in Ohio’s urban counties with fewer voters casting ballots for both Harris and Trump in Hamilton (Cincinnati), Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Lucas (Toledo), Summit (Akron), and Montgomery (Dayton) Counties.
But Harris’ loss of ballots in urban counties were more pronounced. While Trump earned 2-6% fewer votes across Ohio’s large urban counties, Harris lost 8.6% in Hamilton, almost 14% in Cuyahoga, 6.6% in Summit, 12.7% in Lucas, and nearly 10% in Montgomery Counties.
From Axios:
Dave Brock, [Cuyahoga] county's Democratic Party chair, told our colleagues at Axios Cleveland that a combination of factors, including fraudulent national narratives about election security and the lack of visits by candidates at the top of the ticket, may have contributed to the lackluster showing locally.
In any case, overall raw vote tallies are up from 2016 when Trump burst onto the scene — especially for Trump. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the Buckeye State in 2016 by about 455,000 votes: 2.77 million to her 2.31 million. Ohio went deeper red in 2020, when Trump earned 3.1 million votes to Joe Biden’s 2.67 million.
And Trump held fast in 2024 with 3.1 million votes again, while Harris’ headcount fell to 2.47 million.
Trump’s remade GOP and the MAGA movement are here to stay — the headcount of voters showing up for Trump in each of Ohio’s urban counties is up from his 2016 results by 2-11% save Cuyahoga County where his turnout held steady.
But in every surrounding Columbus metro county, MAGA voters improved on 2016 by 15-25%. In other words, the MAGA movement looks strong in Ohio’s greater metro areas.
Could the GOP, transformed into a broad coalition of former Democrats, Independents, and America-first Republicans under Trump’s watch, make inroads into urban areas in Ohio?
