Swing Voter Update: Ohio Swing Voters Send Clear Message on Impeachment

14 Oct Swing Voter Update: Ohio Swing Voters Send Clear Message on Impeachment

In October, our Engagious/FPG Swing Voter Project tour stop brought us into the heart of Rust Belt country, Youngstown, Ohio. The group included eight participants who voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, and three participants who voted for Romney in 2012 and Clinton in 2016.

(If you want to see the trends report from the last 6 months, you can download it here.)

As you’d suspect given the timing, a major topic of our conversation with the group was around the impeachment proceedings. The clear message sent from these swing voters was that Trump voters firmly oppose impeachment and Clinton voters firmly support it. These voters are squarely still in the same camp as they were in 2016. This group, on average, have working knowledge of the impeachment proceedings and generally had their facts straight on how the proceedings work.

We also asked our group to provide a word or short phrase to describe their feelings about the impeachment. We got responses ranging from “Bad for America” and “Exhausting” to “Conflicted” and “Hopeful.”

Here are more high-level takeaways from the Youngstown, Ohio swing voter focus group:

In line with the responses regarding the impeachment proceedings, these swing voters remained loyal to the candidates they voted for in 2016 when asked who they would vote for if there was a redo of the 2016 election. There was not even one defector in the bunch. Additionally, both groups of swing voters expect Trump to win the 2020 election, although the average confidence level for a Trump win was higher (8.8 out of 10) amongst Obama – Trump voters then it was amongst Romney – Clinton voters (6.0 out of 10).

With regard to the economy, the Obama-Trump voters in our group were much more optimistic than the Romney-Clinton voters. Although both sides at least showed some concern about a looming recession.

Another interesting finding… this was the first group of swing voters we talked to that were at least moderately familiar with the field of Democratic candidates running for president. Previous groups expressed only a good level of familiarity with the frontrunner candidates such as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The Youngstown group expressed a higher level of confidence in their familiarity with all the Democratic candidates appearing in the most recent debate. One contributing factor could be that seven of the 11 group members claim to get at least some of their news from more than one cable news network—a significant increase from previous groups.

For more key takeaways and video clips, go here.

Next month, the team heads to Dubuque, Iowa, home of renowned Octoberfest Polka Festival. Hope our team is ready.