Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
Which Ohio counties had the highest share of Democratic votes in 2020 and 2024?
Executive Summary
The claim asks which Ohio counties delivered the highest shares of Democratic presidential votes in 2020 and again in 2024; available reporting and compiled 2020 data show urban counties—particularly Cuyahoga, Franklin and Summit—ranked highest for Democrats in 2020, with other large urban counties like Hamilton, Lucas and Montgomery also carrying substantial Democratic shares [1] [2]. For 2024 the material at hand highlights Cuyahoga County as the clearest Democratic high-water mark—Vice President Kamala Harris carried it with roughly 65% of the vote—but the supplied documents do not present a complete ranked statewide list for 2024, leaving a full 2024 county-by-county ranking unresolved without consulting the detailed official results files flagged in the sources [3] [4].
1. What the 2020 records actually show about Democratic strength in Ohio cities
Official and contemporary analyses of the 2020 presidential returns show a clear urban–rural split in Ohio: Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Franklin (Columbus) and Summit (Akron) posted the highest Democratic vote shares among counties, with other major metropolitan counties—Hamilton (Cincinnati), Lucas (Toledo) and Montgomery (Dayton)—also returning relatively strong Democratic percentages compared with the rest of the state. The 2020 Official Election Results dataset and contemporaneous summaries were structured to allow county-by-county comparison and confirm this pattern of concentrated Democratic strength in Ohio’s population centers, while many smaller, rural counties leaned strongly Republican [2] [1]. This pattern is consistent with national trends where dense urban counties favored the Democratic ticket in 2020.
2. 2024 evidence is clear for Cuyahoga but incomplete for a full ranking
The sources provided for 2024 highlight Cuyahoga County as a pronounced Democratic bastion in the 2024 presidential contest—Harris received about 65% of the vote, especially performing strongly in Cleveland’s East Side and the eastern inner-ring suburbs, which the reporting singled out [3]. At the same time, the supplied 2024 links include summary and precinct-level files that would allow a full statewide county ranking, but the narrative material in the dataset does not itself present that comparative ranking; therefore the claim can be verified for Cuyahoga but cannot be fully corroborated for every Ohio county in 2024 from the narrative sources alone without extracting and analyzing the posted XLSX result files [4].
3. How to reconcile the 2020–2024 picture and what remains unknown
Comparing 2020 and 2024 with the available materials yields a stable conclusion that Ohio’s largest urban counties remain the most Democratic, with Cuyahoga consistently at or near the top. However, the dataset excerpts and news snippets do not provide an explicit, side‑by‑side ranked list that would definitively name the top five or ten Democratic counties in 2024 as they did for 2020; the 2024 reporting is selective and emphasizes notable counties rather than offering a complete statewide table [1] [3] [4]. To finalize a precise 2024 ranked list comparable to 2020 would require direct extraction from the 2024 county result XLSX files or the Ohio Secretary of State’s official results portal referenced by the sources.
4. Alternate viewpoints, reporting focus and potential agenda signals
The available sources show two reporting patterns: comprehensive archival data references for 2020 and focused narrative coverage for 2024 that spotlights Cuyahoga County’s Democratic vote share. That emphasis signals an editorial choice to highlight urban Democratic performance rather than to provide exhaustive comparative tables, which can create the impression that only Cuyahoga was decisive when, in fact, several other urban counties also returned high Democratic percentages [2] [3]. Users seeking a complete, quantitative comparison should be aware that summary articles and county spotlights may reflect political or narrative priorities—urban stronghold emphasis or election-night storytelling—rather than the neutral provision of sortable datasets.
5. Where to look next for a definitive, data‑driven answer
For a definitive, ranked list naming the Ohio counties with the highest Democratic vote shares in both 2020 and 2024, extract the county-level summary files the sources reference—the 2020 “Results by County” dataset and the 2024 summary and precinct XLSX files—or consult the Ohio Secretary of State’s official results pages which host those same files. Those datasets enable precise percentage-to-percentage comparisons across counties and will confirm whether counties beyond Cuyahoga (Franklin, Summit, Hamilton, Lucas, Montgomery) maintained top Democratic shares in 2024 as they did in 2020; the narrative sources point to that likelihood but do not substitute for the full tabular extraction needed for a final, ranked answer [2] [4].