If Ohio was the center of the universe for presidential politics in 2012, Montgomery County was the bull’s-eye.

According to the unofficial statewide election results, Montgomery County mirrored the state’s presidential vote percentages more closely than any of the other 87 counties.

In the county:

* 50.7 percent voted for President Barack Obama, compared to 50.2 statewide;

* 47.7 percent voted for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, compared to 48.2 percent statewide;

* The vote for other presidential candidates was 1.6 percent, both in the county and the state.

“If you look at past elections, last year during the Senate Bill 5 vote, Montgomery County exactly matched the state vote,” said county Democratic Party Chairman Mark Owens. “And we were about a point off on the governor’s race in 2010.”

Both Owens and county Republican Chairman Rob Scott said Ohio has long been crucial in presidential elections because it possesses the same mix of large cities, new and aging suburbs, and rural areas that the nation as a whole does. Candidates know that if their message resonates in Ohio, it likely will succeed nationally, because the candidate who has won Ohio has won the nation in every presidential election in the past 50 years.

In the same way, Montgomery County is a microcosm of the state. It contains a medium-sized city, Dayton, but that city doesn’t dominate the county’s land mass, leaving a healthy ring of suburbs and many square miles of farmland in its western half.

In recent years, the Montgomery County vote is getting closer and closer to the state percentages. In 2000, the county was about 3 percentage points off the state vote — 49 percent voted for Al Gore here, compared to 46 percent statewide. But in 2004, the county-state variation was just under two points. In 2008, it was closer than 1 point. And this year, Montgomery County and the state were only a half-point different.

The same is true nationally — in Obama’s 2008 and 2012 election victories, the county was nearly an exact match for the United States totals. In 2008, Montgomery County voted 52.3 percent for Obama to 46.1 percent for John McCain, while the national figures were 52.9 to 45.7. In this year’s unofficial results, the county voted 50.7 to 47.6 for Obama, while the nation was 50.4 to 48.0.

They are going to keep targeting Montgomery County

For those tired of political ads and campaigns, that’s a bad sign, because it means the national parties likely will continue to use Montgomery County as a proving ground.

Asked if that meant a very contentious 2016 election here, Scott said voters won’t have to wait.

“I would jump even farther — get ready in two years,” Scott said, predicting that Democrats would heavily target Gov. John Kasich in the 2014 governor’s race. “We’re going to be in full swing in a year and a half. … It’s going to be year-round campaigning every year now, and it’s not going to stop.”

Owens agreed that the county will continue to get heavy national attention because it is so balanced. While Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati, has been growing gradually more Democratic, Montgomery County has remained stable. Democrats have won each of the past four presidential races in the county, but with the exception of 2008, the margins have been 1, 2 or 3 percent.

Just like the nation, Montgomery County reaches its fairly balanced vote totals by adding up pockets of heavy Democratic support and pockets of Republican backing.

A total of 47 precincts – mostly in West Dayton and Trotwood – voted more than 90 percent for Obama. In one precinct, Dayton 14-D, Obama beat Romney 543-0, with five people voting for other candidates.

Romney, meanwhile, got at least 70 percent of the vote in 23 different precincts, scattered in a large C-shape in the southern, western and northern edges of the county. The Republican challenger’s biggest margin came in Jackson Twp. Precinct A, where 75.4 percent voted for Romney, and 22.9 percent voted for Obama.

Grant Neely, political science professor at the University of Dayton, said the county’s political diversity is caused both by its mix of communities and the tendency of people to live near people like themselves.

“Within our county … we have a lot of very rural areas and some fairly densely populated areas,” Neely said. “And we have some natural barriers and some longstanding divisions, such as the east-west Dayton division.”

And because commuting is comparatively easy around Dayton, people can take their pick of communities.

“We have a lot of folks who tend to choose to live in areas where people are like them,” Neely said, “where they have maybe the same set of values, at least in terms of political ideologies.”

Dayton precinct 14-D includes the Bella Vista neighborhood off Nicholas Road, and an older but well-kept neighborhood of single-family homes just northeast of the Gettysburg-Germantown intersection.

Dawn Cunningham, who lives in Bella Vista and said she’s working again after a six-year drought, said she almost voted for Romney because she doesn’t like Obama’s positions on abortion and same-sex marriage. But she wasn’t surprised that the area went overwhelmingly for Obama.

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. For myself, I don’t think (a 543-0 precinct) is too healthy,” Cunningham said. “People probably voted for Obama because he’s African-American. And we probably will never, ever get another African-American in office again, so I guess they wanted to give him his fair due. And maybe because he said that he’s for the people … whereas Romney seemed like he was aiming more toward the rich folks.”

Cynthia Campbell, who lives on the north side of Germantown, said she supports almost everything Obama stands for, but she added that she voted for Republican Mike Turner for Congress. She thinks both men work for the entire community.

“I’m praying that (the parties) do come together,” Campbell said. “It’s not Democrat-Republican. It’s all one. God only sees one.”

While Obama dominated the Dayton vote, Neely was not surprised that two-thirds of Romney’s top precincts were in townships, according to the analysis.

“It is the adage that people vote with their feet,” he said. “Well they’re voting with their feet to live in a place with maybe less government taxes, maybe less regulation on what they can do. Those are the folks we would kind of expect to be a little more Republican.”

Chase Holcomb, who lives in the Jackson Twp. precinct that voted most heavily for Romney, said there were multiple Obama signs on a residential street near his home, but that “it’s mostly Romney out in the country.” The precinct features residential areas just south and west of New Lebanon, some clusters of homes on large, rural lots, and plenty of farmland.

Holcomb, who works for a utility company, said he’s no fan of Obamacare or the president’s immigration policies, but said he’s not against all Democrats and added that the nation needs a strong political middleground.

Tim Blanton, a GM retiree farther west in Jackson Twp., backed Romney because of his leadership qualities. But Blanton doesn’t have high hopes that Republicans and Democrats will work together to solve the nation’s problems, calling Wednesday’s press conferences “a dog and pony show.”

“If they all don’t change, we’re just going to continue doing what we’ve been doing,” he said. “Getting a politician to change? Wow. The hope is really slim.”