While polls showed Ohio going for Trump by a small margin, the actual vote was far different: More than eight percentage points and 455,000 votes.
This is a developing story looking at the ingredients to that victory. Analysis will be added through the day.
Toledo likes Johnson?
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson performed the best among the third-party candidates, and he performed best in the Toledo area where there were avid supporters in the business community.
The only counties where he received more than 4 percent of the votes were in Seneca, Wood, Fulton, Henry, Sandusky, Ottawa, Defiance and Hancock counties surrounding Toledo’s Lucas County.
In Lucas, Clinton was the winner with 55 percent of the vote.
Suburban counties at odds
Warren County, one of the wealthiest in the state and the birthplace of the Ohio tea-party movement, delivered heavily for Trump. He led Clinton by 37 percentage points and 42,911 votes.
Warren is northeast of Cincinnati and location of King’s Island amusement park.
Licking County southeast of Columbus also delivered. The location of Lancaster and New Lexington, Licking provided 22,986 for votes for Trump, who led Clinton by 28 percentage points.
Stark leads urban counties for Trump
Devastated urban manufacturing counties that converted to Trump were:
Stark, home of Canton, 29,764 votes difference, 17 percentage points difference.
Butler, between Cincinnati and Dayton and home of Hamilton city, 47,741 vote difference, 28 percentage points difference.
Richland, between Columbus and Cleveland and home of Mansfield, 22,986 votes difference, 28 percentage points difference.
Green, west of Columbus and home of Xenia, 19483 votes, 24 percentage points difference.
Rural counties for Trump
All but seven of Ohio’s 88 counties went for Trump. Rural counties with the most lopsided margins of more than a 50-point difference between Trump and Clinton and a vote difference of more than 11,000: Mercer, Putnam, Auglaize, Darke and Shelby, all on the western edge of the state north of Dayton.
Impact on Kasich
If there is any question that the victory in Ohio was stunning, one need look no farther than the governor’s office. John Kasich, who tried to separate himself as the most civil Republican candidate, had planned to speak in Washington this week on the need to reunite the party,
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, he canceled that appearance after Trump took the state.
On the issues
Polling for the Your Vote Ohio project showed in May that, first of all, Ohioans were exceptionally unhappy. As for issues, the economy topped the list and was linked to trade and immigration.
The polling also showed that Donald Trump captured that topic by blaming trade agreements that allowed cheap imports to destroy the state’s high-paying manufacturing industry, and immigrants, who took jobs and increased the threat of terrorism.