Ninety-three percent of the time since 1896, when the Republican William McKinley won the state and the presidency, Ohio's voters picked the winning candidate. That was the case four years ago when polls had Democrat Hillary Clinton comfortably ahead, but Ohio and the presidency went to Donald Trump. Scott Pelley in 2016 spoke to the state's voters and last weekend he returned to the Buckeye to hear from some of the same voters again. His report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, November 1 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
Polls have President Trump and his opponent former vice president Joe Biden neck and neck in Ohio among all voters. The ones Pelley spoke to seemed to bear that out. But a couple from the Cleveland suburbs serve as a stark reason why. Randy and Cyndra Cole are Republicans, but they tell Pelley they plan to split their vote this time.
"I believe that the Republican Party that I joined years ago has left me. I don't think that the values of the Trump-base Republican Party are the same values that attracted me to the party," says Cyndra. She says she'll be voting for Biden.
Her husband, Randy, says he'll stick with the president. "Obviously, the president can be abrasive and confrontational and that's his style. But now as I've seen four years of the president's record, I do believe the people around him, his policies are those things that I agree with."
Ohio is experiencing its highest level of COVID cases and Pelley spoke to people who lost relatives and who themselves had the disease. He returned to Cleveland's Olivet Institutional Baptist Church where he again interviewed Rev. Jawanza Colvin, who has been organizing get-out-the-vote efforts.
And in Akron, Pelley also interviewed a group of union workers from Goodyear's Innovation Center Manufacturing (ICM) which makes custom tires for NASCAR and the presidential limousine to get their views on trade, workers' rights and other issues important to them.