Why did Gore lose Ohio and Missouri?

[Plankton5165]

Gore came undescribably close in Florida - the home state of his opponent's brother was decided by just one sole pip!

But he lost Ohio and Missouri by about a whopping, staggering, gigantic 350 compared to it.

Why?

Had he won either one, he would've been commander-in-chief.

He even won both of them twice in his VP bids!

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Cultural/social issues. CNN said at the time that exit polls showed gun owners gave Bush the edge in OH.

[NOVA Green]

I suspect being associated with Bill Clinton probably hurt him more here than many other places because of the impact of NAFTA on many workers in the mfg and related sectors impacted.

Can't really blame Nader on this one, and unlike 2004 there wasn't a stealth evangelical "culture war" ballot issue designed to turnout and mobilize evangelical voters.

In retrospect '08 / '12 was probably the high point for DEM PRES nominees in OH if you look not only at Obama's ability to dramatically increase Working-Class AA voters, combined with also performing relatively well in rural WWC areas in SE OH and WWC Industrial Workers in NE OH.

[NOVA Green]

Cultural/social issues. CNN said at the time that exit polls showed gun owners gave Bush the edge in OH.

Not too surprised at that having lived in Ohio as recently as 1996 and certainly there was still a bit of residual anger over the assault weapons ban.

I guess one way of looking at it would be that if you're party is taking hits at the PRES level for backing an unpopular (in Ohio for sure) free trade bill, then how can you expect to retain voters on the basis of economic policy while meanwhile other issues like social policy (such as perceptions of candidates on gun policy) start to become more paramount.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ohio was a lot closer than expected - his campaign had actually triaged the state, assuming there was no hope of holding it. This, in turn, is why it became the absolute obsession of the Kerry campaign four years later.

[Skill and Chance]

NAFTA

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Definitely NAFTA, he could probably have countered that with a pro-labor midwestern runningmate like Dick Gephardt though. One of countless reasons that Lieberman was one of the worst VP picks of all time, maybe even worse then Sara Palin who at least had some value for McCain in motivating conservative base voters.

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Kerry's focus on OH in 2004 had much more to do with the massive job losses in the state than Gore's performance in 2000.

[South Dakota Democrat]

Ohio was a lot closer than expected - his campaign had actually triaged the state, assuming there was no hope of holding it. This, in turn, is why it became the absolute obsession of the Kerry campaign four years later.

Yes, I believe I read somewhere (possibly in Jeff Greenfield's book - Oh Waiter!  One order of Crow) that they were behind by like 13 points in the state when they decided to triage it.