https://www.commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas/campaigns-elections/donald-trump-overcome-ohio-gop/Can Trump Overcome Ohio’s GOP?NOAH ROTHMAN / SEPT. 14, 2016
All eyes turned toward Ohio on Wednesday morning following the release of a Bloomberg poll showing Donald Trump opening a significant lead over Hillary Clinton. At 48 percent to 43 percent, Trump’s 5-point advantage is his largest in the Buckeye State. The survey immediately prompted breathless speculation about the state of the presidential race and whether Clinton’s health scare, which occurred as Bloomberg’s well-regarded pollster was in the field, had upended the race. The presidential race is indeed tightening, but can Trump really turn Ohio red?
Because Bloomberg’s pollster, Selzer & Company, is so highly rated, few will question the methodology. The results diverged dramatically from prior surveys of Ohio, which have shown the race either competitive or favoring Clinton. As such, observers quickly began to wonder whether the survey’s sample, which showed the 2016 electorate in Ohio will be heavily Republican, was accurate. Political observers with only the haziest understanding of the disreputable practice dub this kind of second guessing “unskewing,” but it is only prudent to ask whether it’s really possible that the Buckeye State electorate could end up being that lopsidedly favorable to the GOP. Of course, it most certainly could be, but that won’t happen naturally.
In order for Republicans to enjoy such a dramatic turnout advantage in Ohio, two conditions must be met. The first is that Democrats must be depressed. The fact that they seem to be in a slump today with little enthusiasm for Clinton might explain some of the tightening across all polling, not just in this particular survey. The second condition, however, is harder to make manifest. In order for Republicans to outpace even their turnout performance in 2004 (in which the Ohio electorate was five points more Republican than it was Democratic), the GOP must have a robust get-out-the-vote operation in place. That’s going to be difficult for Donald Trump. The celebrity candidate has not only eschewed traditional GOTV methods, data analytics, and brick and mortar field offices, he has utterly alienated Ohio’s Republican Party.
Ohio’s popular two-term governor and the blowout winner of the state’s Republican primary, John Kasich, has no use for Donald Trump. “I’m not making any final decision yet, but at this point, I just can’t do it,” Kasich said in June when he was asked if he could endorse Trump. Even as the Republican Party’s nominating convention in Cleveland was coming to order, Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges was openly attacking former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for saying Kasich was “embarrassing his state” by not backing Trump.
Manafort is gone, but the bad blood between Ohio’s GOP and Team Trump remains. Ohio’s incumbent Senator Rob Portman, who has tepidly endorsed Trump but has not appeared jointly with the GOP presidential nominee, contends that the real estate mogul can outperform expectations in Ohio by drawing disaffected Democrats into his camp. There’s just one problem with that strategy: it takes work. You need a field operation to turn unlikely voters into likely voters, and Trump’s is thus far lacking.
As of the beginning of the month, the Trump campaign had 16 field offices compared to Hillary Clinton’s 54 today. While Trump’s operation is headquartered in the populous Columbus area, it is clear from the campaign’s focus that they are invested in turning out unlikely white, working-class Republican and independent voters. As a result, the campaign has undervalued Democratic strongholds like Cuyahoga County, where Team Clinton needs to run up the score.
The turnout game is two-fold; if Trump cannot dilute Clinton’s strength in Ohio’s deep blue urban centers and in the northeast of the state, it’s unlikely that he will manage to turn out an electorate that looks like the one in Bloomberg’s sample.
Unlike prior presidential nominees, the Trump campaign has outsourced their GOTV operation to the party’s national committees, state-level parties, and down-ballot candidates. Given the mutual mistrust that exists in Ohio between Trump and those people he needs to get his voters to the polls, this is an ominous portent for him. It is possible that Hillary Clinton could implode—her recent health scare will certainly create even more downward pressure on her polling for the next several weeks. Moreover, Donald Trump could repair all the damage he has done to comity within the party he is vying to lead, but with fewer than 60 days remaining before Election Day, time is short. In Ohio, early voting opens on October 12—the absentee ballots are already in the mail.
It takes more than strength in public opinion surveys to win elections; it takes organization. As of now, Clinton has the edge on Trump on the ground in Ohio, even if she’s losing that edge in the polls.
