Originally Posted by edale
Some of it has to do with the way MSAs are put together. Cincinnati's MSA covers significantly more territory than either Columbus' or Cleveland's.
MSA area (sq miles)
Cincinnati- 4,808
Columbus- 3,169
Cleveland- 1,999
By contrast, Cleveland and Columbus add a ton of land when looking at CSAs, while Cincinnati only adds one county to its CSA.
CSA Area (sq miles)
Cincinnati- 5,195
Columbus- 8,466
Cleveland- 6,436
So, Cincinnati has more of its hinterlands included in its MSA definition than the other Cs. It also is historically more of a Republican city, and the collar counties of Butler, Clermont, and Warren are historically very conservative. Hamilton County was 57% for Biden, but that is lower than Franklin/Columbus (65%), Cuyahoga/Cleveland (67%), Allegheny/Pittsburgh (60%), and Marion/Indy (64%). So even the bluest part of the metro is less blue than neighboring, comparable cities.
You can probably look to a number of reasons why this is. One is that Cincinnati was never the union/labor center that Pittsburgh and Cleveland are/were. I know a lot of these blue collar dems have jumped the party ship, and you can certainly see the impact there in Pittsburgh. But Cincinnati largely never had much of this type of Democratic base back in the day. Its (white) labor class has always voted more Republican.
Cincinnati, like Pittsburgh, also has some pretty depressed older industrial cities in its suburban orbit. It's not all sprawl, but rather a fair number of older cities mixed in with the sprawl, and those places have turned very heavily for Trump. Industrial cities like Hamilton and Middletown (Hillbilly Elegy town) are full of white working class people, and are decidedly different demographics than most people think of as "the suburbs". Finally, Cincy has seen I think the second or third lowest levels of Hispanic immigration among major metros. I believe first in that category is Pittsburgh. Seems like the fringe of Appalachia is the biggest factor here, though it's a combination of all of the above.
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