CLEVELAND, Ohio - It would be easy to say that the reason State Issue 1 was rejected was due to turnout from urban counties like Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties. But support also came from a mix of suburban and rural counties, contributing to the 57% of the state that voted against changing the state constitution.
Across all of Ohio’s 88 counties, the Republican-backed proposal underperformed former President Donald Trump’s 2020 victory in Ohio, an eight-point win that saw Trump capture all but seven counties. Issue 1, in contrast, failed in 22 counties while leaking votes so heavily in the counties where it passed that it produced a 14-point loss.
The proposal to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution, scheduled in an unusual statewide August election in an attempt to preempt a November vote on abortion rights, appeared to motivate voters across Ohio’s geographic spectrum. State Issue 1 would have forced the abortion amendment on the November ballot (and any future amendment proposals) to get 60% of the vote, rather than a simple majority of 50% plus-one vote.
Every urban county shot down the measure. The highest was Cuyahoga County, where 76.46% of the county voted no, followed by Franklin (75.07%) and Lucas (67.22%) counties. Stark County had the tightest race of the urban counties, with 52.48% voting against State Issue 1.
Urban counties could not have carried this election alone. The total number of “no” votes for the eight urban counties amounted to only 46.45% of the total votes during the special election. To pass the vote, urban counties needed backup from some other counties in the state.
In the eight Ohioan urban counties, 65,38% of voters voted “no” on State Issue One. For the seven suburban counties, 55.23% voted no and 44.7% voted yes. The remaining rural counties voted 38.67% against the measure while 61.33% were in favor.
Not every suburban county voted overwhelmingly against State Issue 1. While the highest share of “no” voters came from Lorain County (62.78%), both Butler and Warren counties had fewer people vote “no” than “yes,” at 49.7% and 47.21%, respectively.
In several rural counties, more than 50% of voters denied the proposed change to the state constitution. The highest being Portage County, where 57.94% of voters voted “no.” It was joined by six other rural counties in rejecting Issue 1: Trumbull (57.15%), Erie (56.91%), Geauga (52.21%), Ashtabula (52.06%), Ottawa (51.28%). Greene County — home to GOP Gov. Mike DeWine, an Issue 1 supporter — rejected Issue 1 as well, with 50.45% of voters casting ballots against it.
At the time of this story, Clark County had rejected Issue 1 by a single vote.
For this election, Athens County was assigned its own unique category since it is an outlier as a rural, heavily Democratic county, a trend that continued as 70.67% of the county voted no.
Not a party issue
While Ohio has steadily become redder across several election cycles, the State Issue 1 results show that this election did not fall along party lines.
Nearly 43% of voters cast ballots for the proposal to make it harder to amend the state constitution, a predominantly Republican-driven effort led by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who recently announced a GOP primary run for U.S. Senate for the chance to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2024.
But compared to the percentage of Ohioans who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election against Joe Biden, support was not as strong as it could have been.
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More than 53% of the state voted to elect Donald Trump to a second term as president of the United States, more than ten percentage points different from the special election votes.
Ohio’s flip from an eight-point Trump victory to a 14-point Issue 1 defeat represented a 22-point swing, and it suggests that a bipartisan coalition of voters formed to defeat it.
Several counties that voted to elect Trump in 2020 voted against State Issue in 2023. These include Medina (60.51% for Trump and 54.24% against Issue 1), Ottawa (60.34% and 51.28%) and Geauga (60.32% and 52.21%) counties. Other counties in the same category are Ashtabula, Greene, Stark, Lake, Portage, Erie, Trumbull, Wood, Delaware and Lorain counties.
Compared to the 2022 election, a sweep for statewide Republican candidates in Ohio, other trends emerged.
None of the counties had more voter turnout than the Midterm election, but several counties that largely voted “yes” for State Issue 1 had much lower turnout than the midterm.
Only 18% of Lawrence County voted in the Aug. 8 election, the lowest turnout in the state. A little over a quarter of Pike, Gallia, Jackson, Belmont, Scioto, Logan, Jefferson and Vinton voted. Many of the majority “yes” states had around a third of registered voters go to the polls.
Meanwhile, preliminary numbers show that Geauga and Delaware Counties had the largest voter turnout, both with over 50% of the county voting. Each county had 63% of voters participate in the 2022 midterm election. Putnam and Mercer Counties had around 47% voter turnout, with both having over 75% of the vote in favor of State Issue 1.
Zachary Smith is the data reporter for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. He can be reached at zsmith@cleveland.com. See previous stories at this link.