Ohio's vote can hinge on unemployment: Thomas Suddes | The ...

Susan Walsh, Associated PressIf Ohio’s unemployment rate doesn’t fall further — and look as if it’s staying down — the 2012 World Series may be the last that Barack Obama will get to watch on a White House TV.

Many bystanders handicapping the Barack Obama-Mitt Romney election claim it will follow James Carville’s Law (“It’s the economy, stupid”). And one measure of the economy is the unemployment rate.

Ohio’s March unemployment rate — announced Friday — was 7.5 percent. In contrast, the national unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. The big picture is more complex, but those are the headline numbers.

March county-by-county numbers aren’t yet available, and they wouldn’t be exactly apples-to-apples to the way Ohio’s statewide jobless rate is measured, but for February, Cuya hoga County’s unemployment rate was 8 percent, Franklin’s was 7.1 percent — big government can be a good thing in a state capital — and Montgomery’s was 8.9 percent.

In October 2008, the month before Democrat Obama defeated Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Ohio’s unemployment rate was 7.3 percent, just under last month’s 7.5 percent statewide tally.

Carville’s Law has its pluses and minuses. There are Ohioans who will never vote for any Democrat for president — ever. There are Ohioans who will never vote for any Republican — ever.

But, either way, if the past is any index, most Ohioans won’t give two hoots in Hades about the 2012 election until after baseball’s World Series.

Still, it’s a fact that no Republican has reached the White House without winning Ohio. And since before the Civil War, only three Democrats — Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892, Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 and John Kennedy in 1960 — have moved into or stayed in the White House without Ohio’s backing.

To be sure, it’s unclear that an Ohio presidential election pivots on the state unemployment rate; from county to county, conditions vary.

And unemployment rates are double-edged.

In October 2010, just before

You can read the rest of this article at:: http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/04/ohios_vote_can_hinge_on_unempl.html

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Posted by RobertButler on Apr 21 2012. Filed under 2012 Presidential Campaign. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry