Republican businessman Donald Trump will be the winner of the Ohio presidential election.
CNN called Ohio for Donald Trump at 10:29 p.m. Eastern time.
“Democrats think that one’s gone,” John King said at 10:15 p.m. on CNN, pointing to Ohio.
With 64 percent of the precincts reporting, Trump led Hillary Clinton in Ohio 53 percent to 42 percent, according to the Associated Press.
Trump had 2,257,803 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 1783,013. His essentially half-million vote lead will prove insurmountable.
Trump’s victory in Ohio is especially significant, considering the fact that sitting establishment Republican Governor John Kasich and his state party actively tried to sabotage Trump’s ground game. Kasich and his apparent “consigliere” Matt Borges, the chairman of the state party, have suffered a devastating political blow among Republicans in their own state.
Clinton stayed afloat in Ohio in early network counts. At 8 p.m., precincts rolled in from the Democrat-heavy Franklin County in the Columbus area, showing her with a 53-43 lead, but Clinton’s lead fell apart early.
“Ohio is shifting Republican now, as well,” John King said at 9:15 p.m., when Hillary Clinton was down to below 45 percent.
“The mood is good right now,” tea party leader Tom Zawistowski told Breitbart News before the race was called. Zawistowki largely took the lead of pro-Trump ground efforts in Ohio after the Trump campaign split with the state party. He worked closely with Women for Trump, which kept the ground game going, and the NRA, which kept the mailing game going.
“Six to seven points is where we thought we were going to be,” Zawistowski said, noting that Clinton was only around 51 percent in Cuyahoga County, which is usually a landslide Democrat area. He noted that union members swung the vote there for Trump.