Wait, is Ohio a swing state again?

In 2020, Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 8 points in Ohio. In 2022, JD Vance beat Tim Ryan by less than that. But still, thanks to those results and Mike DeWine’s big win in the state as governor, conventional wisdom has been that the state has gone red– maybe not to the extent Missouri has, but still: Red.

Is that conventional wisdom wrong? Or is the 2024 polling way off?

This, from Axios the other day, caught our eye:

Hold on a second, RCP’s polling average has Trump taking only 51.5 percent in Ohio? And Bernie Moreno at only 42.8 percent?

Yep!

Now, admittedly, Trump’s 51.5 percent is still 8 points ahead of where Harris is. So, that would tally with what happened in the state in 2020.

But the point is this: Yes, really, Moreno is still trailing Sherrod Brown, even in this political environment. The RCP average has Brown 3.7 points up on Moreno. That’s better than Tammy Baldwin is doing against Eric Hovde, who our Wisconsin Republican connections tell us absolutely sucks as a candidate.

Supporters of Frank LaRose, who has actually figured out how to win an election statewide in Ohio without having to rely on Trump’s coattails (which, by the way, look pretty non-existent per the current polling), must be absolutely livid that Moreno got the nomination– and that Ohio Republicans were more or less told that they had to choose between Moreno and Dolan, which turned out to be epic BS.