The day after Akron and Summit County voters cast their ballots for everything from the presidency to a school levy campaign, Signal Akron sat down with J. Cherie Strachan, the director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, to talk about what voters’ choices meant locally and statewide.
Turnout in Summit County was down slightly — it was 71.16% this week, according to unofficial totals, a decrease from the 2020 presidential election’s turnout of 74.67%. Strachan said as Ohio becomes an increasingly Republican state, Akron’s dense urban center represents a Democratic pocket — but it doesn’t matter much to statewide results, which were across-the-board Republican victories.
Here are other takeaways Strachan had from this election.
On Democrat U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes’ Ohio District 13 seat, which she won re-election to with 51% of the vote:
“Sykes has proven she’s a strong incumbent and a centrist Democrat and can swing that her way.
… Both parties had that as a highly contested race. … A lot of the success goes to Congresswoman Sykes being an exceptionally strong candidate. She was a strong candidate two years ago because of all her experience in the state legislature. She knows this area, and obviously, from her family’s political activism, she knows the area inside and out.
She is clearly an exceptional fundraiser. … When you listen to her stump speech, she is clearly positioning herself as pragmatic, someone who brings resources back to the district, someone who gets federal aid back to people who need it for real things here in the district. And I think that’s what you need to do for a district that is drawn to be competitive.
… And I think [Kevin] Coughlin was a good candidate. He’s got some experience, too. I just think she’s just a really hard incumbent to beat at this point. Anytime I heard her give a stump speech, she says, ‘I have three issues that my congressional office, my staff and I prioritize: Constituency service, constituency service, constituency service.’
She is really trying to emphasize that she is there to serve the people of this district and bring resources back. And I think that’s the right tone to hit when you’re in a district that’s this mixed.”
On what led to Republican Bernie Moreno’s U.S. Senate victory over incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown:
“The state’s going to go red anyway, so it doesn’t matter if [Kamala] Harris drove up support in Summit County the way it would have mattered in Philadelphia, or in Bucks County, [Pennsylvania], or the way it would have mattered in Wayne [County, Michigan]. The one seat where we saw that make a difference was Sherrod Brown.
… Moreno was off a couple of points from [Donald] Trump. So people were clearly splitting their ticket. The Bliss poll showed that women in particular were withholding support from Moreno. They weren’t dumping it onto Brown, but they were — 12% of women in the Bliss poll that we did earlier were either not planning to vote, [planned to] withhold their vote, or they were undecided. So some of that might have come from women withholding support from Moreno.
And if Trump had underperformed and just squeaked by, it had been a tighter race, you wouldn’t have had those low-propensity, low-information voters who were just downloading the Republican sample ballot and doing a straight ticket. That’s what carried Moreno over the top and did Sherrod Brown in, was stronger support for Donald Trump in the state than anticipated. “
On what the results say about the Ohio electorate:
“We’re where many people already thought we were, which is that we are not a battleground state anymore. We’re a pretty solidly red state. We now have two U.S., or will have two U.S., senators who not only are Republican, but are well within the Trump camp of Republicans.”
On why Issue 1, regarding gerrymandering, was defeated:
“It’s very clear Ohioans, like most other Americans, don’t like gerrymandering. So why did this go down in flames? I think there’s three potential explanations, and I think that that’s probably a combination. No single voter’s going to be motivated by just one thing, you’re going to get a mix of people with different reasons.
So one is that the language that was on the actual ballot was confusing, and, some would argue, was misleading. So it explicitly said this will require the districts to be gerrymandered. … It could be that people are just frustrated. Like, how many times are we going to have to do this? … So it could just be an indication of frustration.
But then finally, it could also be the cycle. So putting a ballot initiative on a ballot during the presidential election cycle means that you are going to get low propensity voters who only vote in presidential elections. We saw a lot of people came out to support Trump. If they’re the kind of voters who only come out to support Trump, and don’t pay attention to politics a lot the rest of the time, they’re going to be the kind of people who download the sample ballot from the Republican Party and go, ‘OK, I’m supporting Trump, and I’m going to just vote a straight ticket.’ And so I think that probably all three of those things came into play.”
On what it means that Trump gained ground in Ohio:
“The pollsters were wrong. … We all thought that Trump had a ceiling, and that he could mobilize his base but not expand on it, and that turned out to not be the case. And in particular, he seems to have done really well with low-socioeconomic-status, so low-income, but also less education, voters.”
On whether Trump’s victory signals a more conservative electorate:
“Is that a mandate for Republicans on everything, on Project 2025, and on everything? Probably not. It’s probably people who feel like they are struggling to pay their rent or feel like they are struggling with the cost of living and the expenses.
Post pandemic, the inflation and the cost of living increases, the elections that have been held in democracies during that era, the incumbent party, whether they’re liberal or conservative, have taken a beating, and so this could just be more of that.
We won’t know until we see how people react to other aspects of a conservative policy agenda, especially if they take the House, which will be coming quite quickly. But it could just be this appeal to people who are incredibly frustrated because they are really struggling with low-wage jobs and the inflation and the increase in prices.
… Does that mean everybody’s down with deporting 11 million immigrants? Does that mean that everyone’s down with tariffs? Does that mean everyone’s down with a national abortion ban? Or does that mean that this is a post-pandemic phenomenon that’s happening across the world right now, that Harris just couldn’t get away from being part of the Biden administration that is blamed for everything being so expensive?
… Does this really mean that the United States has shifted and become conservative in many of these same ways … the Trump version of the [Republican] party is, or is it a reflection of frustration with the economy?
We’ll have to wait and see how voters react when they make moves to enact the tariffs, or repeal Obamacare, or do some of the things that have kind of popped up as part of that more conservative agenda that aren’t just about the economy, and we’ll have to wait and see how people react.”
On President Joe Biden’s miscalculation about the economy:
“I do think that it took some time for Biden to understand that. On paper, and in comparison to other economies around the world, America got a really soft landing compared to other places, and Biden was proud of it and bragging about it … without realizing that it’s not just what the economy looks like on paper. It’s the income inequality and the fact that the lowest rungs on the socioeconomic status ladder are really struggling.
So jobs came back, but are you making enough to pay rent? So jobs came back, but what does that look like when groceries have increased?
So then, by the time that we switched to Harris, and they realized that there needed to be a shift in messaging, she has this very condensed time period to make that appeal, to talk about the opportunity economy, to talk about things that she would do to address concrete, specific needs. But there’s probably just a lack of credibility that she just didn’t have.
Maybe more time wouldn’t have helped, but lack of time and being associated with the Biden administration that was sort of tone deaf … the Biden administration squandered their credibility on the issue, so people are looking for a change.
…Trump was smart when he delayed sending out the pandemic checks and putting his name on it. People remember that too. I got money to hold me over from the pandemic, and they had Trump’s name on them.”
On why Issue 27, the Akron Public Schools’ levies, was approved:
“Levies didn’t pass in other places, so I think that speaks to a more Democratic electorate in and around Akron that maybe looked at their sample ballot, too. Yeah, OK, the Democratic Party supports this or, parents that have kids in that North Hill high school, or had the empathy for the kids in that North Hill high school that really does need to be rebuilt.”