Close Result in Ohio Special Election

The last year has seen critical special elections popping up across the country, from Georgia to Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, it was Ohio’s turn. As the nation watched, Democrat Danny O’Connor faced off against Republican Troy Balderson in a race for Ohio’s 12^th Congressional House District. Here, Election Central takes a look at why this race was so important, and what implications it may have for the November midterm elections.

Related Links

• Click this link to read about last year’s special election in Georgia.
• Click here to remind yourself about the resignation of Ohio 12th district’s Pat Tiberi.

Meet the Candidates

For the past 17 years, Ohio’s 12^th District has been represented in the House by Republican Pat Tiberi. But in January, Tiberi announced that he would be retiring from his position early in order to pursue other career options. In May, more than a dozen Democratic and Republican candidates faced off in a heated primary election for Tiberi’s vacated seat.

Danny O’Connor emerged as the Democratic frontrunner in a landslide primary victory. O’Connor, who currently serves in an elected office as the Recorder of Franklin County, Ohio, based his campaign platform on supporting job growth and labor unions, clean energy, public education, health care access, and gun safety legislation. He also spoke out against the influence of corporations in elections, refusing to accept any corporate donations.

Troy Balderson won a much closer victory in the May primary to become the Republican candidate. Balderson, a former used car salesman, is an Ohio state senator. He chose to closely align his platform with the Trump administration. In fact, Trump tweeted his endorsement of Balderson and even flew to Ohio three days before the election to rally supporters. When asked by a reporter if Balderson could name a single way in which he disagreed with Trump, he could not.

A Nail-Biter Election

Ohio’s 12^th District is heavily gerrymandered, meaning that district lines are drawn to favor one political party or the other. (See the map embedded below.) In this case, the 12^th District leans strongly Republican because it was drawn to take up large sections of rural areas surrounding the capital city of Columbus. Columbus is one of the most statistically reliable Democratic strongholds in the state.

As a result, Democrats have been elected to represent this district only twice in the past century. In Tiberi’s most recent elections, he regularly won victory with two-thirds of the vote, and running against him was considered by most Democrats to be a political lost cause.

However, continuing anger towards President Trump and his policies led to an unprecedented response from Democrats in the special election, both in the 12^th District and nationwide. While financial donations and postcards to voters flooded in from every state, local grassroots organizers knocked doors, made phone calls, and sent texts to registered voters, aiming to rally Democrats and convince Independents and moderate Republicans who may be unhappy with the Trump agenda. And it nearly worked: by the time all of the votes were counted on this past Tuesday night, Republican Troy Balderson was the victor–but only by less than one percentage point.

Why It Matters

Now Democrats are saying that for such a solidly Republican district to teeter on the brink of turning “blue” is a major political victory–even though their candidate lost. O’Connor’s supporters and many other political observers say that this tight result represents a continuing and growing rejection of the president and his administration’s policies. And the fight isn’t over: Balderson and O’Connor will face off again in November because this special election was to fill the vacancy of what remained of Tiberi’s term.

Now these two candidates will run for a full term in the hotly-anticipated 2018 congressional midterm national election. Already, Democrats are doubling down in their efforts to flip the district: donations to O’Connor’s campaign are rolling in, and volunteers are signing up to make phone calls and host postcard-writing parties to drum up the votes they need to oust Balderson in November. The Republicans have also established a headquarters in the heart of Ohio’s 12th District to better coordinate their efforts for November’s looming contest.

Democrats and Trump critics remain confident that the “blue wave” is starting to chip away at several Republican strongholds like Ohio’s 12^th District. This leaves many to wonder if Democrats will indeed be able to reclaim a majority in Congress in the upcoming midterm elections in November. And if Ohio’s 12^th is any indication, it seems like there is quite a challenge ahead for both political parties. There should be lots of election drama to come.

Dig Deeper As polls closed in Ohio on Tuesday evening, Balderson’s razor-thin lead was even more precarious due to the thousands of absentee and provisional ballots that still remained to be counted. Define each of these terms and then use Internet resources to determine how long it might be before the official vote count in Ohio’s 12^th is finalized.