COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – It's the economy, stupid, as former President Bill Clinton's campaign manager famously said in 1992, at least among Ohio voters.
A review of previous surveys conducted by NBC-affiliated and Suffolk University shows that since 2016, a growing share of Ohio voters has cited the state of the economy as their top concern when casting a vote. Other issues have risen in prominence as healthcare and immigration have lost some of their lusters in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and the Roe v. Wade decision.
Spencer Kimball, director of Emerson College polling, stated that supermarket prices have increased by 30% to 40%, making a $100 purchase cost $130. According to the author, this is beginning to affect American voters, and that's what these midterm elections are about.
Although the number of Ohioans who said the economy was their top concern in a study more than quadrupled between 2016 and 2022, economic problems have shown up in various ways throughout the state's history.
The top three concerns in Ohio over the past 30 or 40 years, according to Herb Asher, an emeritus professor of political science at Ohio State University, have always been jobs, jobs, and more jobs.
Over the past few decades, Asher said, "Ohio has been a state that's been going through an economic shift where we've lost a lot of our manufacturing employment." Communities that were formerly rich are currently struggling, you know.
But today, Asher claimed that Ohio's employment news was positive. The state's 4% unemployment rate is slightly higher than the national average, and there are more unfilled positions than there are job-seekers, according to him.
According to Kimball, Ohio voters have become increasingly concerned about inflation as well as the rising expenses of transportation, groceries, and housing.
You announced three years ago that you were going to retire, had a plan in place, and would receive Social Security and retirement benefits. "Now that the economy has shifted, you don't feel as at ease in that retirement phase. It's harder now for people between the ages of 35 and 49 to buy a home than it was three years ago.
Key Issues for Ohio Voters
Like in previous years, Asher said the state's political hopefuls have focused their campaigning on the issues that Ohioans care about most while avoiding those that would turn off their supporters.
For instance, by criticizing his Democratic opponent Tim Ryan's connections to President Joe Biden, Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance probably won over those who are most concerned about the economy. Vance claimed that the Biden administration wasted trillions of dollars "that we really don't have."
Ryan, on the other hand, has used Ohioans' No. 2 and 3 issues—access to abortion and dangers to democracy—to his campaign's advantage by making fun of Vance. Ryan has criticized Vance as a "political extreme" for his support of abortion restrictions that drove some Ohioans to leave the state and for casting doubt on Biden's validity as the winner of the 2020 presidential election over Donald Trump.
Asher stated, "Some talking points might also be an indication of what their constituency is actually concerned about.
Voters appeared to be less concerned with issues that were important to Ohioans during previous election cycles, such as healthcare, COVID-19, terrorism, national security, and cutting the deficit, according to Asher.
As a result of the June murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, survey respondents in 2020 placed social justice as the third most urgent issue influencing their vote.
Social justice wasn't even an option for Ohio voters to choose this year, according to Asher, and the topic didn't dominate campaign advertisements like it has in the past.
"Concerns about the future of democracy, inflation, and the economy have displaced concerns about social justice, but that doesn't mean those concerns aren't essential," he said. But fewer folks are thinking about that topic right now than they did in the past.
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