Each week, we’re going to try to explore a precinct in our club area to better understand the electorate and identify keys to victory others might be missing.

While the March primary not only sorted out the Democratic and Republican fields in Ohio, it provided some insightful data on areas our club can target with additional resources this fall. One area we’re taking a deeper look at this week is Bentleyville.

Bentleyville has only one precinct—Bentleyville A—with 722 registered voters. Of that count, 126 are registered Democrats, 137 are registered Republicans and 461 are unaffiliated.

In this year’s primary, Democratic turnout was 56.35% and Joe Biden won 92.42% of the vote. Hardly a surprise considering the top races on the Democratic side were largely decided before Election Day.

The more interesting result occurred on the Republican side where 80.29% of voters cast a primary ballot. There, 50% of REPUBLICAN VOTERS voted for Nikki Haley—after she dropped out of the race. More notable, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy secured a combined 8%, leaving Donald Trump with just under 42% of the GOP vote in Bentleyville. Again, keep in mind that this is a Republican-leaning precinct, with more registered Republicans than Democrats…but it went overwhelmingly against the former president.

Bentleyville wasn’t the only city in the county where Haley landed more than 50% of the registered Republicans. Orange Village and Shaker Heights did as well—although both have a higher number of left of center voters and vote heavily Democratic. But again, these are all areas where more than half of Republican voters are saying NO to Donald Trump.

The Bentleyville number shows that our club, like in 2020 and 2022, has a real opportunity to engage persuadable Republicans to continue voting against Donald Trump and join our coalition. This was central to our work in the past two elections and will continue to be the case this fall. Yes, this is a turnout election year. But, we absolutely should not—and frankly, cannot—rely on just Democratic votes when there are so many others who are looking for a place to stand in November.