Ohio has loomed large on the American electoral map for a while now, and not just due to its size. With a population of nearly twelve million, the state’s electoral votes can be enough to swing presidential contests, as George Bush’s back-to-back victories in 2000 and 2004 attest. But Ohio’s electoral salience also comes down to its reflection of politically potent national trends: deindustrialization; the shift from a manufacturing-heavy economy to one centered around finance and services; the complex and ongoing reconfiguration of the Democratic and Republican voter coalitions.

For Democrats, the state has frequently been the scene of electoral blowback from the Bill Clinton years. Both Al Gore and John Kerry would have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by securing Ohio’s electoral votes. Hillary Clinton’s catastrophic loss in 2016, meanwhile, ran squarely through Midwestern states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin — each of which was carried by Donald Trump. Though Barack Obama carried Ohio twice, Joe Biden lost it for the second election in a row even as he defeated Trump two years ago.

Presidential elections are decided by too many overlapping and intersecting forces for simple narratives to explain everything. There can be little doubt, however, that Trump’s (at least rhetorically) heterodox messaging around issues like free trade and the decline of American manufacturing helped him make significant inroads. In the electoral realignment underway since the 1990s, Democrats have increasingly foregrounded the interests, preferences, and language of affluent suburbanites and elite professionals — regularly downplaying working- and middle-class voters in erstwhile industrial heartlands.