2020 presidential election

After winning Ohio by a comfortable eight-point margin four years ago, Donald Trump finds himself in a statistical tie with Joe Biden for Ohio's 18 electoral votes going into the last weekend of campaigning.

This presidential election in Ohio is clearly going to shatter all previous records for turnout. By the time the polling places open on Nov. 3, over half of Ohio voters will have already cast early ballots, either by absentee ballot or in person at county boards of elections.

After Donald Trump won Ohio by a convincing eight percentage point margin in 2016, there was an assumption by many Republicans and Democrats that Ohio would not be a factor in the 2020 presidential contest.

But that was then; this is now.

For the first time FBI agents can remember, they will hold a pre-election meeting in Columbus Friday afternoon with the Ohio Secretary of State and the U. S. Attorney's Office.

As of mid-week, over 1 million Ohioans had requested absentee ballots for the November election. Election officials expect that many or more between now and the weekend before the Nov. 3 election.

Election officials in Ohio and elsewhere are expecting an enormous turnout for this November's presidential election.

When this year began, few people in politics believed Ohio would be in play this presidential election, mainly because Donald Trump won the Buckeye State in 2016 with a comfortable eight percentage point cushion.

The long lines and mechanical breakdowns in some major counties of Georgia during the Tuesday primary has Democrats and voter rights activists suspecting the GOP of voter suppression, a charge the Republican state leaders deny. 

Earlier this week, Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper and some Democratic candidates for Congress and the state legislature traveled to the sometimes forgotten southern Ohio small cities of Chillicothe, Ironton and Marietta. They were there because in 2016, Hillary Clinton was not. 

Donald Trump won the White House in 2016, despite losing the popular vote, because three states - Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan - gave him wins by paper-thin margins, while Ohio went for Trump by eight percentage points. That was enough to push Trump over the 270 electoral vote threshold he needed to defeat Hillary Clinton.

President Trump made his seventh visit to the Cincinnati area Thursday, with a "Keep America Great" rally at US Bank Arena on the riverfront. Now that the hoopla is over, what do the polls say about Trump's chances of repeating not just his eight-point win in Ohio in 2016, but of winning a second term? Senior Political Analyst Howard Wilkinson spoke with WVXU's Jay Hanselman about where Trump goes from here.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are planning an Aug. 1 re-election campaign rally at Cincinnati's US Bank Arena - which raises the question of why they are stumping here so early in the campaign. Trump did not win either Hamilton County or Cincinnati in 2016. WVXU's Senior Political Analyst, Howard Wilkinson, told News Director Maryanne Zeleznik that his real audience is in not in Cincinnati, but in the suburban and rural counties which surround it.