Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
Probably because Ohio isn't dominated by a single city and thus a single political "aristocracy" for lack of a better term. Anyone who's anyone in Illinois Politics is coming through Chicago. But in Ohio you have multiple competing cities and even competing industrial systems with one going out in the north through the great lakes and one looking south to the Ohio river.
Its probably helped keep Ohio the eternal moderate of American politics.
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If you're talking about the mid 19th century, it's more a matter of high levels of
rural population than just urban. Ohio had a lot of prime farmland, which (in the days prior to mechanization) led to much higher labor needs per acre than something like ranching.
You can still see this legacy today. Look at this 2010 population density map. Rural Ohio is mostly yellow, with lots of highly populated county seats. There are some relatively low population areas in Appalachian Ohio,, but less than most of the surrounding states, and way less than out West, where areas outside of cities are nearly totally empty.
