Upon opening my Dayton Daily News this morning, I found this map: Source here
Interesting, no? Follow me below the fold for more.
Something is going on here in Ohio.
Something funny happened in the March 4 primary election in Mercer, Greene, Butler and dozens of other traditionally red counties:
They turned blue.
<snip>
Some counties bucked decades of voting patterns. Bush won Mercer County with 75 percent of the vote in 2004. On Tuesday, 53 percent of the voters cast Democratic presidential ballots.
DECADES of voting patterns. Ever since I became involved in politics in 2004, it was a well-known fact that counties such as Greene were dark red Republican strongholds. Mercer County is a very rural county at the Ohio/Indiana line - another place where it is surprising that more people voted Democratic.
Why did this happen? Three possibilities:
Some Republicans want change
They, like us, are tired of Bush and the antics of the Republicans. I don't need to tell you that the economy is the biggest issue here right now. Between factory closures and the gas prices ($3.27 here last night), people here are very upset. Bush didn't help his standing when he claimed that we weren't in a recession and that he hadn't heard about the $4/gallon gas prices. Here's what Tom Zitter, chair of the Mercer County Republican Party, had to say:
Tom Zitter, vice chairman of the Mercer County Republican Party, attributes the heavy Democratic vote to "people who were expressing their opinion in an interesting way."
However, he also says
Some Republicans, he acknowledged, voted for the Democrat they thought would be the most vulnerable in the fall.
...Which brings me to our second possibility:
The "Limbaugh effect"
We've all heard over and over that Rush Limbaugh has been campaigning for Hillary, because she is the "weaker candidate". I witnessed two of my co-workers, lifetime straight ticket Repubs, considering this. Frankly, it shocked me - because these two are some of the biggest Clinton haters that I've ever seen. We would be naive to think that Rush didn't have an effect here, but who knows how much? (I looked for his Arbitron ratings for Ohio, but couldn't find any) I do also know some Republicans that crossed over for Obama, so I know that the crossover vote went both ways here.
John McCain already had the nomination, so why vote?
McCain had wrapped things up a week before our primaries. These high Dem numbers could simply be a matter of the Republicans staying home, since their big race was decided.
There is no way of anyone knowing exactly why this happened. I do know that things are going to be interesting all the way up until November, no matter who turns out to be our nominee.
All blockquotes taken from here.