here. he was ahead five points just a couple weeks in the quinnipiac poll. she caught up entirely over the last two weeks. almost every poll is showing her moving forward. but again, the demographics of ohio, we are a very diverse state. we sort of represent the country a lot of ways. the demographics here pretty much guarantee a very close race. the other answer is it s a pretty partisan time. most people are sticking to their party and there s a small group of independents in the middle. i think those are the ones breaking our way. the governor of the state of ohio is not going to vote for donald trump. senator rob portman, he s running again for re-election, he s ahead still. even republicans in the state, powerful republicans don t support donald trump. can you really say it s so partisan in the state of ohio when even republicans, some republicans are against donald trump? yeah. actually it s very helpful that you have a lot of republicans like john kasich, like state house me
they are also talking about mobilizing their bases because politics is first get your base to come out to vote, and they are both going for their bases, then go for the swing voters out there. that s typical strategy here. in a place like ohio, places like for example franklin county and hamilton county, ohio, where cincinnati is, are really the two places that oftentimes you need to concentrate to move those swing voters. yes, clinton going to cuyahoga is about moving the base. most analysts are saying hillary clinton will win in a landslide, and that ohio won t much matter this time around. do you agree with that? not necessarily. first off, i think trump has to win ohio. has to win ohio to win the presidency. if clinton were to lose it, might not be critical but certainly it would make her equation a little more difficult. you hit on the bigger question in terms of the fact that for so many years ohio has been such a perfect battleground and bellwether state nationally that whoe
a place called german village. it s a neighborhood that s bustling. as you can see, it s a bustling place. it s full of small business owners. looks like this place. this is the kind of voter that both candidates covet, and believe me, the people that i ve talked to in german village they are motivated to vote. so let s talk about the voter, and who they may vote for and why, talk about that and more is cnn s chief political correspondent, and paul singer a washington correspondent for usa today and a white house correspondent for npr welcome to all of you. all right. so let s talk about the american voter. because republicans are very concerned, dana about those down ballot candidates especially in states like ohio and new hampshire. and there s an interesting ad released by republicans in new hampshire that seemed to point to a clinton victory.
you should have chased him down even farther. i mean, there s no happy middle ground here. i think the message was that there are topics that are off limits to donald trump, and, and, you know, my job is to ask the questions, his job is to decide how he wants to answer them. although i didn t get the question out. but i think you were pretty clear in what you were asking him. on the subject of a rigged election, the ohio secretary of state, the man who is in charge of elections here in the state of ohio, john husted, has been very vocal in saying you know what, there s no voter fraud. there are safeguards put into place. the elections are going to be fair. like how does donald trump marry his his allegations of a rigged election about what ohio s secretary of state is saying? and to his credit, john husted has said that they you know that the election system here is virtually impossible to fraud. you can t rig an election in the state of ohio. and 33 of the 50 state attorneys
day every day, well you saw it, he walked away. he didn t want to talk about that. and i thought it was an opportunity for him to say to ohio voters, how he would respond to those accusations. because we re hearing it all day. and there is [ inaudible ] ohio. there is. there definitely is just like there is in the rest of the country. he s not doing as well with women here as he is not doing as well with women around the country. and you know, like i said, this this was a question that i think was an opportunity for him. because he really had the opportunity to say, you know, to answer his critics, i guess you could say. you covered presidential races for years and years. many, many years. candidates for president. has this ever happened before? not to me, no. actually he did walk out on a reporter in an interview right after mine. so i don t think this is an unusual thing for him. but but but wait a minute.