Would a Trump presidential nomination help Democrats?

Oklahoma County might provide the state’s only drama during next year’s presidential election, potentially giving President Joe Biden a consolation prize in a state expected to support the Republican nominee by a wide margin.

However, which candidate performs best in central Oklahoma could help move the needle for down-ballot legislative and county seat races.

“Oklahoma is a Republican state, and we see no signs of that changing,” wrote Pat McFerron, president of CHS and Associates, about his firm’s latest polling on next year’s presidential election.

The poll from June showed Biden significantly behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley among Oklahoma voters in a theoretical presidential contest. It also showed Biden trailing by 23 points to Donald Trump, the one-term president leading in most national primary polls.

Support for Biden could help other Oklahoma Democrat candidates

Those results are unsurprising in a state that has supported Republican candidates for multiple generations, including in 2020.

But the race tightens and even flips for Biden when polling just the Oklahoma City metro area.

Voters in Oklahoma, Cleveland and Canadian counties — nearly one-third of all the state’s voters — supported Biden over Trump by four points, with most of the current president's support likely coming from Oklahoma County. DeSantis edged Biden by two points in those same three counties.

Winning or losing specific counties won’t matter as the winner of a majority of votes in Oklahoma will secure all of its seven electoral votes, as Trump did in 2020.

But McFerron said a strong performance by Biden in central Oklahoma, especially Oklahoma County, could help other Democratic candidates.

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“Clearly, a Republican down-ballot ... would prefer to see the top of the ticket win by nine than lose by four,” McFerron wrote.

Trump on the ballot could help Democrats running in tight races, at least according to McFerron's poll and theory.

However, it remains to be seen which local races could be tight.

Several Democratic state House members from Oklahoma City won their elections in 2022 by a sizable margin. In races where Democrats lost, it was not a particularly close contest.

State Rep. Tammy West, a Republican in a Bethany district, won reelection over a Demcoratic challenger by 15 points, which would seem to give her a strong position headed into 2024 even if a Republican presidential candidate deflated her party's votes.

The polling was conducted in June among 500 registered voters using a combination of mobile and landline calls. CHS and Associates has a B/C grade from the poll tracking site FiveThirtyEight.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma County could be only drama during presidential election: poll