The next big day that will shape Ohio's future representation in Washington comes long before the next national election in another two years.
By the end of the year - probably within the last two weeks of December - Census Director Robert Groves will report to President Obama the first results of Census 2010.
What Obama will get are the state-by-state population numbers used to determine how the 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be divided among the states.
The safe bet is that Ohio will lose two seats, dropping its total from 18 to 16. This would be a continuation of a loss of power that began 40 years ago. Ohio had 24 seats during the 1960s, before losing one or two each decade since.
But losing only one seat this time is a possibility.
To illustrate how close Ohio is to keeping its seat, if a 436th seat in the House existed, Ohio would be in line for it. This is based on running the latest population estimates through an online calculator provided by the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center.
As it stands, the final seat - No. 435 - will go to the state of Washington.
If Ohio's population was 42,753 higher than estimated in 2009 - an increase of just 0.4% - and nothing changed elsewhere, Ohio would grab that final seat from Washington, giving the state 17 seats when the next Congress is elected in 2012.
Lisa Neidert, a senior research associate at the Population Studies Center, said she wouldn't be surprised if Ohio ended up losing just one slot.
"There are a lot of states on the border. Minnesota and Washington are too close to call," Neidert said. "In Michigan in 2000, we were [considered] safe. We had to lose 200,000 to lose a seat."
Yet, Michigan lost a seat in 2000, not because the pre-Census estimates were off for the state, but because the national population was much higher than expected, Neidert said.
Still, there is a theory that Ohio isn't as close to holding onto 17 seats as 2009 population estimates indicate. The reasoning is that each year, Ohio loses out a little more to growing states in the South and West; so the spread should increase again this year.
But growth elsewhere isn't what it once was, in part because of the bad economy.
Demographer William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, noted in an analysis that migration has slowed, particularly to places like Florida. In fact, state-to-state migration is at a post World War II low, Frey wrote.
If the moving patterns from the early 2000s had held, Florida likely would have overtaken New York for the size of its Congressional delegation, Frey wrote after the 2009 estimates were released. Instead, because Florida has ranked near the bottom of the country in picking up new residents through migration, that's not likely to happen.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there has been no firm data in 10 years.
"These estimates, as good as they are, are just estimates," Frey said during a phone interview. "The last time we had a real Census was 10 years ago.
"There are going to be surprises. The surprises could be enough to effect Ohio, effect New York, effect Florida."