Why Barack Obama is likely to win Ohio? It is the improved economy, stupid -- Unemployment cut by one third as auto companies hire and so do banks

By: Patrick Roberts | Published Friday, December 21, 2012, 8:23 PM | Updated Friday, December 21, 2012, 8:23 PM

Why Ohio is going to vote for Barack Obama

Which state in the union has featured the following employment developments this month?

Chrysler announced they are adding 1,100 new jobs, J.P. Morgan Chase is looking for hundreds of bankers, and the Cleveland Clinic needs so many new nurses they rented out the Cleveland Browns football stadium for a jobs fair.

Yes, indeed,  it’s Ohio, and the unemployment rate is just seven percent these days, well below the national average and seemingly ready to go even lower as the above statistics make clear.

Ohio was once the rust belt and a byword for decaying infrastructure but now thanks to the auto bailout and an upbeat economic forecast, the populace are set to vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney.

There is precedence for this. Back in 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis won several farm states like Iowa which he had no right to win after farm states made clear how much they blamed the Reagan administration and Dukakis opponent V.P. George Bush for the farming prices slump.

Similarly, Obama has stayed ahead in Ohio despite every effort by the Romney camp to undermine that lead-- it truly is the economy stupid.

“We’re doing great,” says Rich DeVore, 47, president of a United Autoworkers Union local in Perrysburg, on the outskirts of Toledo told Bloomberg News. “You see a lot of great things happening.”

Put simply, unemployment has dropped by one third and Ohio looks like it will continue to support Obama as a result.

It may well put him in the White House.