Free Republic

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/how-trump-won-the-white-working-class

Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan hasn’t decided whether he will challenge Nancy Pelosi as House Democrats’ leader, but he said in an interview Wednesday night that if someone were to make such a move, it would have to come in the next 24 hours. That would mean he’d have to make a decision to take on the powerful, longtime leader by Thursday. “Somebody’s got to make a decision, I would think, in the next 24 hours or so if they want to have a realistic shot at winning,” Ryan told RealClearPolitics. There have been consistent rumblings among some House Democrats since...

Red-state Democrats and party strategists are already nervously looking past 2016, when they are angling to recapture the Senate, to the 2018 elections, hoping against hope that their party isn’t setting itself up for a titanic midterm backlash that could flip control of the Senate for a third time in three elections. As difficult as the 2016 Senate map has been for Republicans, who had to defend numerous blue- and purple-state seats and could lose their majority, Democrats’ 2018 map looks practically unnavigable. The party starts with five ruby-red seats to defend: Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia....

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-04/trump-shows-early-voting-strength-in-ohio-iowa-in-closing-days

Early voting numbers in Ohio released Friday confirm that Democrat voters are not enthusiastic about their candidate, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The number of ballots cast in Cuyahoga County, where the city of Cleveland is located, is well behind the number of ballots cast by the same time in 2012. Cuyahoga County, which voted 68.8 percent for Obama in 2012, is one of the key Democratic Party strongholds along with Franklin County (Columbus) and Summit County (Akron). As of last Friday, voters in counties that were carried by President Obama in 2012 are requesting at least 4 percent fewer ballots...

Why is Republican nominee Donald Trump leading in two battleground states and nearly tied in another with less than two weeks before the election? Experts, analysts, and Washington, D.C. insiders lectured the American people on how this was not supposed to happen. According to a new poll, Trump maintains a healthy lead in Ohio over Hillary Clinton, 46 to 42 percentage points and in a Bloomberg Politics poll of Florida, Trump leads Clinton 45 to 43. In Pennsylvania, Trump continues to dwindle Clinton's lead where he is now within three points of the Democratic nominee. Florida and Ohio are must...

CINCINNATI, OH (AP) - Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges says he's voting for Donald Trump, whose presidential campaign in the swing state earlier denounced and cut ties with Borges after he openly criticized Trump. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports Borges told GOP insiders in an email Sunday that he'll vote the Republican ticket, including Trump for president....

Democrat Hillary Clinton moved into the lead in three key swing states and is now tied 45-45 with Republican Donald Trump in Ohio, according to a new independent poll of likely voters from Quinnipiac University. A separate poll of likely voters released Monday by CNN shows Trump holding a 4-point lead over Clinton in Ohio, 48-44, which is just outside the margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The CNN poll of likely voters shows 4 percent backing Libertarian Gary Johnson and 2 percent voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. The CNN poll shows voters see...

Trump is imploding nationally—but Clinton has failed to connect here with disaffected whites, African Americans, and young voters. Al Edmondson is worried about the election. His “Earn My Vote” Facebook page and YouTube channel feature interviews with local politicians filmed at A Cut Above the Rest, the five-chair barbershop he owns in Columbus, Ohio, its walls decorated with scenes from African-American history. “I take out my tablet and ask them, ‘What are you going to do to help our neighborhoods?’” Edmondson says. “We hold them accountable.” A veteran of the first Gulf War who still wears the high-and-tight fade, Edmondson’s...

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by four points in North Carolina, while Trump is ahead by one in Ohio, according to two new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls of these states. In North Carolina, Clinton gets support from 45 percent of likely voters, Trump gets 41 percent, and Libertarian Gary Johnson gets 9 percent. (The Green Party's Jill Stein didn't qualify to make the ballot in the state.) [continued]

Because they are only 19, Grace Danby and Courtney Trudeau are preparing to vote in their first presidential election. The Ohio state students who play for the women's club hockey team are part of the millennial generation, loosely defined as 18-34-year-olds, that is predicted to be one of the largest voting blocs in the 2016 election. They also share another trait: they identify as libertarians. "Any of the third parties I would consider would take away votes from Donald Trump," Danby said while also expressing dislike for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "I don't have a lot of time to think...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Matt Borges has become something of a Donald Trump whisperer. When the Ohio Republican Party chairman calls, the GOP nominee for president listens. Trump toned down his attacks on John Kasich, who challenged him in the primaries, after Borges told him it would be political suicide to pick on Ohio's popular governor. And when Borges believes the New York businessman has gone too far, he doesn't mince words. The two speak frequently by telephone and when Trump campaigns in the Buckeye State. But the contact has intensified in recent days, as Trump's campaign reels from the damaging...

The latest wave of the YouGov/CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker polled likely voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin In a new wave of the YouGov/CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker Democrat Hillary Clinton leads her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, in Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The surveys were conducted before the release, Friday, of tapes showing Donald Trump speak in lewd terms about groping women. But a follow-up survey that recontacted the same voters from Friday to Saturday in Pennsylvania and Ohio reveals the vast majority of those who said they would vote for Trump earlier in the week are unmoved about...

Donald Trump is changing some of his advertising plans. He's focusing more than ever on Pennsylvania and Ohio, a sign of the importance his campaign is placing on those two states. The campaign plans to spend almost $1 million next week in Pennsylvania and $1.2 million there in each of the next three weeks, Kantar Media's political ad tracker shows. In Ohio, he'll spend more than $700,000 next week and about $1 million in each of the following three weeks...

PPD/Emerson has Trump +1 in FL . . . but talk about screwy! He is at 18% with blacks and 35% with Hispanics! Sorry, unless you are polling lesbian academics, this is at minimum a 5-point poll and game over. They also have a tie in NV (Team Trump is confident they are up in NV). Emerson has Cankles leading AZ, even though Trump is getting 40% of the Hispanics there? Not a chance in hell. Trump will win AZ comfortably 7-10 points. Interesting info out of Montgomery Co. OH: in 2012 absentees looked like this: R 7,400 D 3,179...

THE BIG IDEA: MIDDLETOWN, Ohio—Many Washington elites, including Republicans, do not know a single person who supports Donald Trump. In this depressed industrial town in southwestern Ohio, it is hard to find anyone who says they are for Hillary Clinton. “I cannot tell you one person I know of who has said to me that they support Hillary. Not one,” said Chris Polleys, who cleans benzene pots at the AK Steel plant here. “I don’t understand how she’s doing anything in the polls. I see Hillary for prison, but there’s no Hillary for president signs anywhere. It’s just impossible for...

Here are some numbers from Montgomery County, OH, a key OH county won by Democrats for the past four elections, if only narrowly. First some caveats: this is today, and things can change. They did in 2014, when the Rs built up a big lead, then lost it for the rest of the election. But more important, Ohio law says that anyone who does not vote in primary is tossed into the “unaffiliated/independent” classification. 2012 R 13,356 D 12,630 I 9,622 2016 R 17,465 D 14,156 I 4,528 This is in large part why some of us—me in particular—were not...

The 180 year old conservative newspaper mainly representing the right leaning Hancock county in Ohio has declined to no endorse either leading presidential candidates. Quoting from the article about why it will not endorse Trump: This year, however, The Courier cannot endorse the Republican Party’s candidate. Americans always put their country first, way ahead of their party, and we withhold an endorsement not to spite the party for selecting Donald J. Trump, but because its nominee has clearly proven to be unfit to be president of the United States of America. Also quoting from the article about why the news...

COLUMBUS — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is pulling away from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Ohio, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll released Monday afternoon. In a survey of 497 likely Ohio voters conducted in the days after the first presidential debate, 47 percent of respondents backed Trump, versus 42 percent who picked Clinton. Another 6 percent sided with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Among other results released Monday, Trump was ahead of Clinton in Florida (46 percent-41 percent). Clinton was preferred in North Carolina (46 percent-43 percent) and Pennsylvania (45 percent-41 percent).The results had a margin of error...

PORT CLINTON, Ohio - Every few minutes, the glass door of the Ottawa County Republicans' storefront office would swing open to admit a blast of humid air and another supplicant. Word had gone forth: Headquarters had a new shipment. "We just got a bunch, and were we ever tickled," Carolyn Adams, the county chairwoman, said one afternoon last week. "The first time, they only sent us 50, and they were gone in less than 24 hours. People were desperate." Now she could meet the demand for Donald Trump yard signs, and it was steady - one street-level indicator that the...