United States presidential elections in Ohio
Updated: Wikipedia source
Following is a table of United States presidential elections in Ohio, ordered by year. Since its admission to statehood in 1803, Ohio has participated in every U.S. presidential election. For most of its statehood from the Twentieth century on, Ohio has been considered a swing state, being won by either the Democratic or Republican candidates from election to election. As a swing state, Ohio is usually targeted by both major-party campaigns, especially in competitive elections. Pivotal in the election of 1888, Ohio was a regular swing state from 1980 until 2016. Additionally, Ohio was previously considered a bellwether. Historian R. Douglas Hurt asserts that not since Virginia "had a state made such a mark on national political affairs". The Economist notes that "This slice of the mid-west contains a bit of everything American—part north-eastern and part southern, part urban and part rural, part hardscrabble poverty and part booming suburb". In the time since the Revolutionary War, Ohio has had ten misses (eight Democratic winners, one Democratic-Republican winner and one Whig winner) in the presidential election (John Quincy Adams in 1824, Martin Van Buren in 1836, James Polk in 1844, Zachary Taylor in 1848, James Buchanan in 1856, Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Joe Biden in 2020), and prior to the 2020 election it also had the longest consistent perfect streak of any state, voting for the winning presidential candidate in each election from 1964 to 2016 — a streak that ended when Joe Biden won in 2020. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, and since the advent of the duopoly two-party system, Democrats have won the presidency without winning Ohio only eight times, in the elections noted above. Winners of the state are in bold. Party abbreviations:
D = Democratic R = Republican D-R = Democratic-Republican Fed. = Federalist Prog. = Progressive (three distinct parties in 1912, 1924 and 1948, respectively) Am. Ind. = American Independent Party (1968) States' Rights D = States' Rights Democrats ("Dixiecrats") of 1948 Lib. R = Liberal Republican Party ("Mugwumps") in 1872 Const'l Union = Constitutional Union Party (1860) N. Dem = Northern Democratic Party (1860) S. Dem = Southern Democratic Party (1860) Nat'l R = National Republican Party (1828 & 1832, later merging into the Whig Party).