Ohio

[CountryClassSF]

Obama's campaign was a master at localizing the campaign in each swing state, particularly in Ohio.

Because Mitt was overtly concerned about the flip flopping stuff, he honed in on the same message nationally in every state. In a 21st century campaign, this proved to be a losing strategy either way.

If you take a look at the Ohio page & trends, you'll see leftward tilts in nearly all of the liberal enclaves like Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, and a few counties in the Northeast in the Mahoning valley.  I attribute this to the turnout operation as well as the fired up progressive/African American factor.

As for the counties that went rightward, I believe many of those counties in the eastern part of the states are what can be considered "coal country" - folks who are directly impacted by the EPA's policy towards coal.

In the other parts of the state that trended D, you'll notice that many of them are somewhat conservative counties in the southern part of the state that McCain outperformed Romney in.
Particularly Ross County.

While Obama had the clear turnout/technical advantage over Romney, I think the locality of the issues mattered a lot.  Exit polls showed that if you agreed with auto bailout or directly benefited from the auto bailout, you were almost uniformally likely to support Obama.

By localizing the issues & demonizing Mitt with the "Let Detroit go Bankrupt" spin that Romney did a terrible job deflecting, it translated into a model that was similar to the 2008 electorate in Ohio.

Despite my opinion that Ohio made a bad choice, I think the voters there saw a different kind of campaign that felt more like a governor's race than a presidential race