White Christmases are pretty rare in the Columbus, Ohio area. An inch or more has fallen on the date only 11 times since 1878. An official White Christmas, however, is defined as having 1″ or more snow on the ground, not necessarily falling on the day itself. That has only happened 21 times since 1939, with only 4 of those times coming since 2000. So these white holidays are relatively rare.
A white Christmas Eve has been even less likely. 1″ or more has been on the ground on December 24th just 16 times since 1939.
Accumulating snow is not all that rare for Christmas Eve. It’s occurred 31 times since 1878, or about once every 4-5 years. So not exactly an annual occurrence, but it happens at least a few times per decade. However, most of those instances were less than 1″ of snow- in fact, 27 of the 31 times were less than 1″. That means 1″ or more of snow has fallen on Christmas Eve just 4 times in the last 142 years, a very rare event indeed.
The largest Christmas Eve snowfall until this year was just 2.7″ in 1980. This year’s Christmas Eve snowstorm brought anywhere from 2″-8″ across the Columbus metro area. In Franklin County, 3″-5″ was common. Officially, the airport received 3.4″ on the 24th, which counts as the largest Christmas Eve snowstorm in Columbus history. Snow was still falling lightly Christmas day, so a little more could be added to the final storm total, but another official White Christmas has gone into the books.
Although Ohio is technically still counting some votes, there shouldn’t be any significant movement in the overall numbers, so we can now take a look at how the local area voted down to the precinct level. In this post, though, the focus is on 2020 election results for Columbus metro counties, as well as past elections going back to 2000.
First, here are the voting total breakdowns by every metro county since 2000.
Delaware County Total Votes By Election 2020: 126,374 2016: 105,639 2012: 98,899 2008: 92,581 2004: 80,456 2000: 55,403 Fairfield County 2020: 81,598 2016: 73,554 2012: 72,220 2008: 72,147 2004: 67,882 2000: 54,094 Franklin County 2020: 632,532 2016: 587,524 2012: 572,188 2008: 561,763 2004: 525,827 2000: 414,074 Hocking County 2020: 13,860 2016: 12,929 2012: 12,768 2008: 13,016 2004: 13,199 2000: 10,756 Licking County 2020: 94,396 2016: 83,624 2012: 81,550 2008: 82,570 2004: 79,420 2000: 62,466 Madison County 2020: 19,887 2016: 17,421 2012: 17,557 2008: 17,510 2004: 17,398 2000: 14,667 Morrow County 2020: 18,468 2016: 16,688 2012: 16,217 2008: 16,679 2004: 16,328 2000: 12,839 Perry County 2020: 16,676 2016: 15,101 2012: 15,020 2008: 15,437 2004: 15,189 2000: 12,828 Pickaway County 2020: 28,326 2016: 24,912 2012: 24,154 2008: 23,787 2004: 22,852 2000: 17,740 Union County 2020: 33,535 2016: 27,695 2012: 25,623 2008: 24,984 2004: 22,631 2000: 17,024
Total Metro Area 2020: 1,065,652 2016: 965,087 2012: 936,196 2008: 920,474 2004: 861,182 2000: 671,891
All of Columbus’ metro counties saw at or near record turnout levels, but also just high general vote totals. The metro added almost 400,000 total voters since 2000, partly explained by the area’s population growth.
Now let’s look at a breakdown of partisanship by total votes. With the margins, positive numbers are Republican, negative numbers are Democratic, again since 2000.
Only 3 metro counties- Delaware, Fairfield and Franklin- moved further blue since 2016. Franklin and Delaware moved strongly left, Fairfield only slightly. Delaware and Franklin also moved more blue from 2012 to 2016. Union stayed very similar to 2016. Delaware and Franklin are the 2 most urbanized counties in the metro, so it makes sense they moved bluer. The most rural counties tended to have the strongest movement to the right.
2020 was the first election in which either party surpassed half a million votes.
Metro Area Margin Between Democratic and Republican Votes (Negative is Democrat, Positive is Republican) 2020: -87,648 2016: -45,097 2012: -65,040 2008: -52,119 2004: +40,202 2000: +63,063
2020 provided the largest margin for either party since 2000, and the metro has generally become more blue over time.
