Additionally, this is the first time since 1892 that an incumbent president carried the state while losing reelection nationally.

However, on March 16, Governor Mike DeWine recommended moving the primaries to June amid concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.

For example, it was a vital tipping-point state in the heavily contested 2004 election, and its projection in 2012 put Barack Obama over the top in the Electoral College.

After Trump won Ohio in 2016 by an unexpectedly large margin of 8 points, it was initially considered out of reach for Democrats.

In 2016, however, it voted over ten points to the right of the nation as a whole, indicating that it might be on the cusp of losing its bellwether status.

[94] And indeed, in 2020, Ohio backed the losing nominee for the first time since it backed Richard Nixon in 1960, and in doing so, it voted over ten points to the right of the nation overall for the second time in a row, giving Trump a comfortable eight-point margin even as he lost nationally.

This indicated that Ohio is likely following a similar path to that of Missouri, another former bellwether state in the Midwest that has more recently become reliably red.

Biden's results were an all time-best for Democrats in two counties - Franklin, home to the state capital of Columbus, where he received 64.68% of the vote and beat Trump by 31 points, and Hamilton, home to Cincinnati, where he received 57.15% of the vote and beat Trump by 16 points—even greater than Franklin D. Roosevelt's and Lyndon B. Johnson's landslides.

Ohio is one of three states, the others being Iowa and Florida, that voted twice for Barack Obama and twice for Donald Trump.

Mahoning County, anchored by the car-making town of Youngstown, voted Republican for the first time since Richard Nixon's landslide re-election in 1972.

David Betras, who was Democratic chairman of Mahoning County until 2019, speculated on the disconnect between Democrats in Washington who focused messaging Trump's unfitness for office, his taxes and possible impeachment, and the concerns of blue-collar workers were supporting Trump for his trade war with China, regardless of economic pain caused by tariffs.