Does This Quiet Blue Tide In West Chester Offer A Path For Ohio Dems?

West Chester, Ohio is situated in the southeast corner of Butler County, roughly 18 miles from downtown Cincinnati.

Founded as “Union Township,” West Chester started experiencing significant growth after the opening of Interstate 75, which today cuts neatly through the township from north to south. West Chester is Ohio’s largest township, with voters rejecting reincorporation as a city thrice since the late 1980s — over concerns about increased taxes.

If the name “West Chester” is ringing a bell and you don’t live there, it’s probably either because you’ve been to the “Cincinnati” IKEA or because former House Speaker John Boehner lived in the Wetherington neighborhood of West Chester while he represented OH-08 in Congress (this is a hint as to the traditional politics of the township).

West Chester has a reputation for being incredibly conservative. In fact, in the short section of West Chester’s Wikipedia article about government, it has been stated as fact, “West Chester Township leans heavily toward the Republican Party.”

It’s probably still true. But that might be changing.

I started exploring the data for this article because West Chester is very near and dear to my heart. It’s where I grew up, had my first job, got my first taste of political activism, lived full-time the first 19 years of my life—and then part-time another five years.

Growing up, I was virtually always the only Democrat in any of my classes. I remember a peer bringing in a deck of cards with John Kerry’s face branded as the joker, and the teacher laughed. When I tried to print anti-Bush jokes off a floppy disk, I nearly got suspended. So suffice to say, in 2016 when I noticed a significant shift away from Republicans under President Trump, I was intrigued.

According to an un-cited claim on West Chester’s Wikipedia page, President George W. Bush won 76% of the vote to John Kerry’s 16% in 2004. Unfortunately, Butler County’s public precinct-specific election reporting only began in 2007 so I can’t yet verify (working on it!) but that percentage does seem a little high. It would also mean 8% of the township voted third party, and I’m skeptical more people voted third party in 2004 than 2016.

But, I expect whatever share of the vote Bush got in 2004 was formidable. And 70%+ certainly wouldn’t be shell-shocking. So, Donald Trump only mustering a mere 57% of the vote in West Chester in 2016 was…interesting.

Since Donald Trump claimed the Republican nomination in 2016, a major electoral shift has been the suburbs moving away from their GOP roots and toward the Democratic Party. This movement was insufficient for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but in 2018 was solid enough to help the Democrats retake the House. In 2020, it looks like suburban gains with modest turnout increases in major metropolitan cities were just enough to take Joe Biden over the finish line.

But this formula doesn’t quite work in Ohio. Our suburbs—specifically, the counties that surround our major metropolitan cities—are more white and rural than their equivalents in other swing states.

One of the only bright spots on the Ohio map for Democrats in 2020 was in Delaware, the county just north of Columbus, where Joe Biden only lost by 7 points (John McCain won by 20 points in 2008, a very favorable year for Dems). But Delaware County is still 85% white, and 20% of residents live in rural areas. In contrast, Montgomery County in PA—which is the county immediately north of Philadelphia and served as a massive vote basket for Joe Biden— only 78% of the population is white and only 2.8% live in rural communities.

The numbers are even trickier in southwest Ohio. Even the urban center of Hamilton County, the home of Cincinnati, was a red until President Obama flipped it in 2008 (even as Bill Clinton easily rode to re-election in 1996, Senator Robert Dole carried Hamilton County decisively).

So after the 2020 election was certified in Ohio, I went back and see how Joe Biden fared in West Chester and whether he was able to out-perform Hillary Clinton and post up what would surely be a historic margin for Democrats in West Chester. The results, well, I’ll let you see for yourself:

Joe Biden posted up a compelling 44% of the vote in a township that Barack Obama could only muster 35% out of in the mega blue wave of 2008. This feat is even more impressive if you consider that Joe Biden’s 9 point increase from 2008 coincides with a 12 point increase toward Republicans statewide over the same timeframe.

Whereas Donald Trump lost a huge chunk of vote in 2016 to the “other” category (Clinton only beat Obama’s 2008 margin by 2 points), Joe Biden was actually able to get a sizable chunk of West Chester to pull his lever. How did this happen? What does this new coalition look like? Is there any way for West Chester to flip blue? And if it does, what does that mean for the possibilities of assembling a winning Democratic coalition in Ohio at a moment where the state feels lost to a sea of red?

My grandfather settled in West Chester within what would become one of the townships oldest neighborhoods — though at the time, it was a few roads, a few farms, and a few homes. He built the house himself, and when his kids got older they would bike around the neighborhood watching new houses go up.

When my mom was young, she remembered the now endlessly congested Tylersville Road as a Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s, and a gas station. The Dudley Farm was still a farm, and Voice of America was just a radio tower and not a shopping center — or even a metropark.

I have deep roots in West Chester. But I’m a little rusty. I moved out of state in 2017, and haven’t made any of my semi-annual pilgrimages back this year due to COVID-19. I’m going to try to dive into some pretty specific precinct-by-precinct data to try to explain a fairly remarkable electoral shift, but it’s possible some of my context might be old. Nothing would make me happier than other sets of eyes getting on this data and provide even sharper information—particularly any new housing development that might impact the numbers.

Okay, with more exposition than a foodie’s recipe blog post, here’s a look at the township in 2016 and 2020. I’ll try not to endlessly reference precinct numbers and talk more broadly, but dropping the precinct map below for reference:

For a township that’s supposed to be a Republican stronghold, Hillary Clinton has real areas of strength in the township. I’ll get into more precinct analysis later on, but she is competitive west of I-75 and wins two Port Union precincts—a region where Obama performed fairly, but failed to win any precincts in either 2008 or 2013 (West Chester redrew precincts in 2013, so it’s not a direct comparison).

Joe Biden flips three precincts from red to blue, and seems to make gains…almost everywhere. Literally. I won’t bury the lede any further, here’s the precinct-by-precinct swing just from 2016 to 2020 — and remember, Hillary did *okay* in 2016.

Quite literally the only precinct to not swing more blue in 2020 is WC39, which is the one Democratic stronghold in West Chester. It voted D+60.57 in 2016, and D+60.41 in 2020.

The primary divide you may have noticed already from the precinct maps is east and west with I-75 being the marker. The west side of the township is already a battleground, with Trump only besting Joe Biden by 3–4 points there (depending on if you include WC39 and WC30 which are fairly evenly split by the interstate). The east side is traditional West Chester, posting up big numbers of Donald Trump. The most Republican precinct in the whole township is actually my home precinct in WC18, where Trump romped with 66% of the vote.

The east side includes Pisgah, and the neighborhoods around Hopewell Elementary and Hopewell Junior—two of the oldest schools in the Lakota Local School District.

And that sums up much of this region: old. The neighborhoods are old, with a high proportion of seniors and only a smattering of families (this dynamic is a littttlee different east of Cox Rd.)

Crucially, many of the new families who moved to the area for West Chester’s sterling schools in the 2000’s opted for newer subdivisions and neighborhoods north of Tylersville, so I’d hazard a guess that this area also isn’t particularly college educated. I definitely didn’t share a neighborhood with all my classmates whose parents were doctors or engineers. But at the same time, there’s only a very limited stock of apartments or condos here—lower income complexes that typically help Democrats in other regions of the township. It’s really a lose-lose for the blue team.

I think Joe Biden did pretty well here all considering. If a Democrat wants to flip West Chester blue, they need to hold Joe’s margins here or improve them just a smidge. It’s very unlikely any of these precincts are going blue themselves.

On the other hand, Joe Biden made really strong progress North of Tylersville and west of I-75 where lots of families with kids settle down. He flipped WC3 blue, which is a nice area but not quite as high income as WC2—the “Senour” precinct. The gated community of Wetherington on the opposite end was also a pain point. Some stray observations so this doesn’t get too overwrought:

• Joe Biden made additional progress over Hillary Clinton in Beckett Ridge, falling short by only six points. This golfing neighborhood is definitely trending in the right direction for the Dems, but with one warning sign: Beckett swung relatively lightly toward Biden in 2020 compared to other areas. There might not be many persuadable voters left, and this is a must-win for any Democrat wanting to win West Chester.
• For two elections in a row, North Port Union has become something of a base for Democrats, and in 2020, Biden flipped the Union Center / Lakota West precinct too. This area has a higher amount of condominiums and apartments than the rest of the township —that could give it some sub $100k households that we know are more likely to vote blue. There’s probably room for Dems to grow here.
• I have no idea what to make of WC28, a stubbornly red precinct sandwiched between several strong Dem precincts. Obama actually won this area in 2008 and 2012, but it included half of what is now WC39 (remember, the Dem stronghold). I really wish I could jump in the car and just drive around here, because I’m guessing the housing stock is just really different.
• Biden flipped WC16, which is the precinct that is home to the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati. This is a neighborhood that will continue attracting a diverse residency, and is somewhere Dem support could probably grow.

Joe Biden’s formula for winning the 2020 election was simple: Counter surging rural support for Donald Trump by getting the right margins in the urban centers and flipping persuadable voters in the inner suburbans.

But Ohio’s suburbs are very exurban, so the formula breaks. If Democrats want to win the state, they need to win some of these exurban areas or gain ground in rural areas. Probably both. There is a good article that starts the conversation on rural areas here.

West Chester is one case study of Democrats, slowly, very slowly, working to convert the exurban regions. Democrats in Butler County should be happy that Joe Biden improved literally everywhere in the township—even just narrowing margins in weak spots. West Chester swung 10 points toward Democrats in 2016, and another 10 points in 2020. If it swings another 10 points in 2024…it’s blue.

Will it? No idea. There’s signs that some of the “swingy-er” precincts are starting to tap out of Democratic converts. And even if West Chester flips, does it matter? While West Chester swung 10 points in 2020, Butler County as a whole only swung 4 points. The rural rout might not be over for Democrats, so gains in areas like West Chester could be offset by additional losses in other areas.

Also, maybe West Chester is an aberration. Are comparable exurban areas outside other urban centers behaving differently? I don’t know, and after spending two weeks screaming at the Butler County Board of Elections website and Google Sheets I’m not looking to immediately find out.

But maybe there’s a path. Maybe.

Acknowledgments:

• Even though our politics are 100% opposite, thank you to the administrator of West Chester Townhall for preserving old precinct maps.
• Thank you to whoever at the Butler County Board of Elections decided in 2008 to start publicly posting election results by precinct.
• But NO thank you to whoever decided that those precincts results should be in PDF form (!!) for the first eight years.