Kyle Kondik, a Cleveland-area native who wrote “The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President,” said the Buckeye State is one of several where Trump won fairly comfortably in 2016 but is now being forced to play defense. “The fact that Ohio is apparently not totally locked down for Trump is an indication of the immense amount of work the president needs to do across the Midwest in the final 40 days of the campaign,” he wrote for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a publication by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, where Kondik works.