ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio — This year, Athens County voters gave Donald Trump a higher share of votes than they have any other Republican presidential candidate so far this century.
President-elect Donald Trump received 44% of Athens County’s vote in the 2024 election, according to official election night results released by the Athens County Board of Elections on Nov. 15. That’s 2 percentage points more than he won in his failed bid in 2020, and 6 percentage points more than he won in 2016.
The worst GOP result in Athens County this century was in 2012, when Mitt Romney secured only 31% of the county’s votes.
Athens County Republican Party chair Jay Edwards — also the outgoing, term-limited representative for Ohio House District 94, who will be replaced by Kevin Ritter, of Marietta — told the Independent he was “thrilled” by the GOP’s vote share in Athens County.
“It's an amazing accomplishment by our central committee, our executive committee, and all the volunteers that we had here in Athens County,” he said.
He views the county as increasingly competitive, he said.
“We're going to change the dynamic in Athens County. We're going to get Republican candidates elected,” he said. “You're going to see that in the upcoming elections … we're going to fill the ballot and have Republican candidates up and down the ballot to compete and give people an option in this county.”
Currently, Athens County’s only Republican officeholders are Auditor Jill Davison and Judge George McCarthy.
Athens County Democratic Party chair Lauren Dikis told the Independent she does not believe the county is actually growing more competitive at a local level.
“We have an incredibly strong group of committed office holders that people you know trust and continue to reelect,” she said.
Edwards credited Athens County’s increasing GOP presidential vote share to Trump’s appeal and what he described as a failure by the Athens County Democratic Party to reach voters beyond the city of Athens.
How blue is Athens County, really?
Trump won his comparably high share of votes amid high voter turnout, measured as the percentage of registered voters who cast a ballot in the election.
However, Republican votes have increased alongside a steep drop in voter registration counts. In 2016, for instance, Trump received only 15 fewer votes than he received this year. However, he won 6 more percentage points in 2024 than in his first campaign.
According to the 2020 census, Athens County’s population was slightly greater than it was in 2000, at 62,431 people. But Athens County had nearly 10,000 more registered voters that year than it does today.
Dikis said the Democratic Party and its candidates have worked to get people registered to vote. But, referring to local efforts to register voters, she said, “I don't know if that is really the issue here.”
She pointed instead to efforts by Republican state legislators to restrict voting, emphasizing restrictive voter ID laws, like the law requiring a photo ID to vote, which was signed into law in January 2023.
“We’re really doing a lot of work here, but we're fighting against a system that is designed to prevent people from voting,” Dikis said.
The biggest change in Athens County’s number of registered voters came between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, when Athens County lost more than 6,000 registered voters. In 2020, Ohio University’s on-campus student population changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tony Brooks, Athens County Board of Elections deputy director, previously told the Independent he wasn’t sure why Athens County’s share of registered voters fell off so dramatically. He pointed to multiple possible factors, including a modest population decline between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, cancellations of out-of-date voter records and changes due to the pandemic.
However, while Ohio University is now functioning much as it did before the pandemic, overall voter registration numbers in the county went slightly down between 2020 and 2024.
Significantly, areas of the county with the highest traditional concentrations of Democratic voters — the city of Athens and Canaan Township — had 55% fewer registered voters this year than in 2000. The number of registered voters in precincts along the county’s borders, which generally trend more conservative, increased by 10% over that same period.
Eligible residents may register to vote online and at various locations throughout the county, including at local libraries and the Athens County Board of Elections office.
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