CANTON, Ohio — In Stark County, there’s only one thing on everyone’s mind this election: the economy.
Linda Fuller said as she packed her groceries into her car, shopping has become more tough for her lately.
“The economy sucks,” Fuller said. “It’s really, really bad for people on Social Security, those types of situations.”
And when he goes to the polls, he will vote based on how much money he has in his wallet.
“I worry about finances; financially, if people are able to pay rent, buy food, and even with the little help that you get from the government, it really isn’t that much, it really isn’t that much,” she continued.
That’s exactly what voter Joy Dodgen is worried about. We met in downtown Canton, the largest city in Stark County — an area that relies on manufacturing.
The U.S. Census reports that the median household income was $40,000, $25,000 less than the state median of $65,000. So every dollar counts.
“Gas is getting more expensive, food is getting more expensive, everything is getting more expensive,” Dodgen said. “What else is next?”
He believes former President Donald Trump will do a better job of curbing inflation than Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s main model is to impose higher tariffs on goods coming from outside the country. Economists from Goldman Sachs They argue this could lead to consumers paying more in stores.
Harris’s main model is to require corporations, as well as the wealthiest Americans, to pay higher taxes. She also wants to crack down on price gouging at grocery stores, but she would need congressional approval of her plan, so that’s not a done deal.
Voters like Kevin Rupert just want to see change.
“I remember a few years ago I had thousands of dollars in the bank,” Rupert said. “Sometimes I live paycheck to paycheck because of things happening.”
Rupert, Dodgen and Fuller are just three of nearly 250,000 registered voters in Stark County.
Stark is known as a county that has voted for both Republicans and Democrats for decades.
Stark voted for former President Barack Obama 49-48% in 2012, then for Trump 56-39% in 2016 and 58-40% in 2020.
Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown won 49-44% in 2012 but narrowly lost 49-50% in 2018.
In 2023, county officials voted 53 percent to 47 percent to protect access to abortion, a victory of 6 percentage points.
Ten percent of voters are registered Democrats, 20% are Republicans and the remaining 70%, like Rupert, are unaffiliated.
He says he may share a slate of candidates, certainly running against President Trump, but some Democrats will be in the lower tier.
“I vote mostly Republican,” he said. “I’m not anti-Democratic or anything like that.”
Fuller is also not registered with either party, but she hasn’t told us who she’s voting for. But she does want a president who will spend the next four years working for the average American.
“They want to help people in general, not just the wealthy but the middle class and those who can’t help themselves,” Fuller said.
As she concluded her trip to the grocery store, she expressed hope that voters would make the right decision.
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“This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ stories, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets because it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
