How Clinton won in Ohio
It came down to places like "The Little Smokies," the hilly region where the Scioto and Ohio rivers meet, more than 200 miles south of Cleveland.
There, 81 percent of Scioto County's Democratic voters, nearly all white, stood with Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose campaign was reborn Tuesday after beating rival Barack Obama, 54 percent to 44 percent in Ohio.
Voters in The Little Smokies figured big. The county produced a nearly 10,000-vote margin for Clinton - equal to Obama's margin of victory in the more populous urban Montgomery County, which includes Dayton.
Combined with voters in the state's other 62 rural counties, voters in Scioto helped Clinton beat back a surging Obama, whose five county victories Tuesday were in urban and suburban areas, including Cuyahoga County.
Obama beat Clinton in Cuyahoga 53 percent to 46 percent, or by about 23,000 votes.
Though Obama lost virtually no ground in the race for delegates, Ohio's election results complicated the road to the nominating convention by sharpening the differences in each candidate's voter base.
Clinton overwhelmingly attracted white voters, women, older voters, rural voters and union members; Obama attracted affluent voters, black urban voters and college students, according to voting patterns analyzed by The Plain Dealer and by exit poll data provided by the Associated Press.
In previous primaries, exit polls showed Obama capturing more of the white male vote.
Clinton's domination in rural Ohio, whose residents are largely white and poorer than those in other parts of state, wasn't an accident.
Clinton and her surrogates -- namely Bill Clinton and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland -- targeted voters there.
Bill Clinton, whose roots in Arkansas made him popular among Ohio's rural voters in his 1992 and 1996 elections, campaigned in 20 cities, the bulk in rural areas.
Strickland, elected governor by a landslide in 2006, was born in Scioto County and, as a former congressman, once represented a dozen counties along the Ohio River.
In addition to campaigning alongside Hillary Clinton, Strickland worked his contacts, from small-county bosses to small-town reporters, a network that appears to have helped her in rural Ohio.
When Strickland learned Obama was visiting southern Ohio last weekend, for instance, he called contacts at radio stations and made impromptu visits to television stations in West Virginia that provide coverage to southern Ohio.
"I found out that there is not a lot of news on Sundays," Strickland said in an interview Wednesday. "My goal was to make sure any exposure Obama received was negated."
Strickland said he believes voters' familiarity with him did make a difference, especially with those who made up their minds at the last minute.
"When people like both candidates, the opinion of someone they know can make a difference," he said.
Obama did best among blacks who also turned out in greater numbers than in past Ohio primaries. He got backing from nine in 10 blacks.
Such support was evident in Cuyahoga County, which includes the largest black voting bloc in the state. He won 70 percent of the vote in the delegate-rich 11th Congressional District, represented by Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who backs Clinton. About 55 percent of the district's residents are black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Strickland said it's unfortunate that some voters appear to have cast votes along race and gender lines.
"There's no sense pretending that some prejudice and intolerance isn't there," he said. "But the bigger story is that an African-American and a woman have been embraced by huge numbers."
Clinton and Obama split among independents, a group the Illinois senator had solidly won in recent primaries.
Obama did better among more affluent voters in the state, in places like Franklin and Delaware counties, which have median incomes above the state's average.
Clinton and Obama campaigned in middle-class regions of the state largely around economic issues such as trade.
The two candidates battled in particular around the North American Free Trade Agreement, which unions blame for the loss of jobs in Ohio. They each accused the other of being more supportive of the deal. But during the final days before the primary, Obama's campaign was accused by a Canadian television network of privately downplaying his opposition to the deal to the Canadian government, an issue Clinton pounced on.
In the end, Clinton won far more blue-collar workers and voters who live in union households. She won nearly six in 10 votes from union households and the same number among people who earn less than $50,000 a year, according to exit polling data.
She picked up the contested Mahoning Valley, which includes Youngstown and has been hit particularly hard by manufacturing job losses.
Dave Regan, head of the Columbus-based Service Employees International Union 1199, which endorsed Obama, said Clinton and her surrogates were "skillful and effective" in selling their anti-NAFTA position.
"The real irony of this is that the people who brought us NAFTA managed to campaign as critics of that trade agreement," he said. "Sen. Obama has to rightfully reclaim that issue. In our judgment that issue slipped away."
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interesting because for a generation the dem party has been not a true political party, but a forced alliance of
special interest groups seeking government favors and/or an alliance of groups without a common interest
that have been forced together by what they perceive as a common enemy. us. whichever the case, it is and
has been unnatural since it's inception. maybe we are seeing it unravel.
and this wold also tend to explode The BarackStar!'s "unity" theme, which would make sense since it was crap
from the beginning; independents split in OH.
