Hillary Clinton to return to Ohio amid optimism about early voting
Hillary Clinton will be returning again to Ohio after campaign stops this week in Toledo and Akron, her campaign announced Friday morning. She’ll hit Columbus just before the Tuesday voter registration deadline and the beginning of early voting in the state.
An Ohio poll released this week showed Clinton with a two-point lead over Trump.
High-profile surrogates have been blanketing the state and will continue to do so -- including her husband, Bill Clinton, who barnstormed across eastern Ohio on a bus tour this week, musician John Legend, who will perform at a concert on her behalf in Cincinnati Sunday, and President Obama who will rally in Cleveland a week from Friday.
There’s a big push from Clinton, who’s investing her own time heavily here, as well as the highest-level surrogates she has -- all for a state her campaign has said she does not need to win in order to beat Donald Trump in November. Still, denying Trump a victory here would be a huge advantage -- even if she doesn’t need it, no Republican has ever won the presidency without Ohio, a point that is frequently made.
Her campaign is feeling optimistic about turnout levels, despite some less than sunny media reports that suggested that canvassing efforts have been failing to arouse enthusiasm for her candidacy. But according to a Clinton campaign official, the opposite is true -- the campaign is expecting to see turnout that exceeds levels in both 2008 and 2012, according to the early voting indicators.
For instance in Florida, 2.72 million voters have requested mail ballots, compared to 1.86 million at this time in 2012, and Hispanic mail ballot requests are up 77 percent, compared to this time in 2012. Asian mail ballots are up 79 percent, compared to the same time period.
Recent polls have shown Trump leading Clinton in Iowa, but the Clinton campaign says that three times as many Democrats have at this point returned ballots than Republicans, and twice as many Democrats have voted early in person.
Virginia is seeing absentee voting that’s up 60 percent compared to the same period in 2012.