As Lake goes, so goes Ohio

Lake County, near Cleveland, mirrors Ohio closely in its voting record.

PAINESVILLE (AP) — A Northeast Ohio county that includes a mix of blue-collar Cleveland suburbs, upscale communities, wineries and farmland hugging the Lake Erie shoreline could emerge as the political bellwether in the toss-up state of Ohio.

Lake County’s voting record mirrors Ohio’s more accurately than any other county in the state, according to an analysis by The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer of voting in Ohio’s 88 counties since 1960.

“It’s a pretty good bellwether up here,” says Christopher Skubby, a Lakeland Community College political science professor. “Compared with other counties in the area, Lake is the one that most resembles a swing county.”

Ohio was pivotal in 2004, giving President Bush the electoral votes he needed to win the election. No Republican has been elected president without winning Ohio, and just two Democrats have done so since 1900.

Bush won Ohio with 50.8 percent of the vote in 2004, while he took Lake County with 51.1 percent — a difference of less than 1 percent. Bush’s margin in Lake County in 2000 was off from the state margin by 1.7 percent.

Lake County is, by area, the smallest Ohio county but ranks 11th with a population of 227,511.

The county, located northeast of Cleveland, has a similar level of college-educated people, about 23 percent, as the rest of Ohio but is wealthier, with an estimated 2006 median household income of $51,322, compared with $44,532 statewide. Lake County has fewer minorities, with a 94 percent white population, compared with Ohio’s 84 percent.

There are about five registered Democrats for every four Republicans in the county, while the party rolls are about even statewide.

Party affiliation measures who votes in primary elections, and “the majority in Lake County do not want to belong to a political party,” says Jan Clair, director of the Lake County Board of Elections and co-chairman of the county Republican Party.

Dale Fellows, a businessman who is co-chairman of the party with Clair, said there’s “a huge bloc of independent voters who will swing in either direction.”

In other election years, political analysts often picked Stark County, which includes Canton, as the state’s most reliable bellwether. But its bellwether status was tarnished when Stark County favored John Kerry despite Ohio’s overall victory for Bush in 2004.

Lake County has its exceptions and voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, when Ohio preferred Richard Nixon.

Lake County voters tend to be economically moderate and somewhat socially conservative, says Jack DeSario, a political scientist at Mount Union College in Alliance, in Stark County, and a bipartisan political consultant who has run about 100 campaigns, including several in Lake County.

The Lake County board of commissioners is split 2-1 in favor of Democrats, the county treasurer is a Democrat and the GOP dominates other countywide offices.