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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27492 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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What's up with Ohio? I know next to nothing about the place, but I lumped it in with places like Iowa and Nebraska. Has the been a shift or was it always this way? A quick Google suggests maybe Cleveland and Columbus have gotten bluer?

Ohio was a swing state up until ‘16, it’s now red maga country but not exactly social conservative HQ. More populist.

Cleveland has always been deeply blue. The Dem primaries are the local elections in most cases. The outer suburbs not as much, but what conservatives are there are mostly fiscal conservatives. A lot of boomer former hippies that became good earners in their middle age and and suddenly cared about taxes. Substantial gerrymandering of the state as a whole has produced a state house that doesn't accurately reflect the beliefs of the people in Ohio. Even the rural north eastern counties voted Yes on both issues. That area is historically more Catholic than Evangelical and many of them are only culturally Catholic and aren't really motivated politically by their religious beliefs.

Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana also shot down abortion bans via referendum. The median voter may not be in favor of unlimited abortion, but they have zero trust the GOP will only actually pass moderate abortion restrictions. It's the reverse of the gun issue - the median voter actually is uncomfortable with unalloyed access to guns, but doesn't trust the Democrat's on the issue.

Ohio is one of the more heavily gerrymandered states in the country. It's slightly moderately red, but not heavily red like the Ohio GOP supermajority would suggest. Probably could've legalized recreational marijuana back in 2015 if the Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative (Issue 3) didn't have language in the amendment that would've enshrined a marijuana oligopoly in the Ohio constitution.

EDIT: strikethrough adverb

I think it is less an Ohio thing and more a marijuana/abortion thing. My recollection is those two issues also passed as ballot measures in some other pretty red states last year.

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