OH-05: District Demographics

Useful demographic information about the 5th Ohio Congressional District can be found at CQ Politics and at the Cleveland.com district profile.

This is an enormous district geographically, including all or part of 16 counties, but it has no major metropolitan areas. According to the 2000 census there are 630,730 residents, of which 326,668 are active voters. The most populous county is centrally located Wood County (121,065 residents), home of Bowling Green State University in its largest town (29,636 residents).

The district is 94% non-Hispanic white, 99% American-born, 59% married, and the median household income is $41,701 (only 1% of the households are above $200,000). District residents are 49% urban and 51% rural.

This district has the highest concentration of blue collars workers of any in Ohio. The work force is 46% white collar, 40.5% blue collar, and 13.5% service industries. Only 15% have undergraduate college degrees, only 5% have graduate degrees. About 8% are below the poverty line.

There are about 60,000 registered Democrats (20% of all voters) and 97,500 registered Republicans (30%), leaving about half of the voters as independents. It is rated R+10.1. There hasn't been a Democratic Congressman in this district since 1938, and there has never been a woman in Congress here. George Bush won 61% of the vote in both 2000 and 2004; Kerry managed only 38%.

Weirauch got 96,656 votes in 2004 (33%) and 98,544 votes in 2006 (43%). Incumbent Paul Gillmor dropped from 196,649 votes (67%) in 2004 down to 129,813 votes (56.8%) in 2006. Although Weirauch's percentage in 2006 was the highest of any challenger to Gillmor, she trailed far behind Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), each of whom carried the district.