COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio residents are just a little more than two months away from Election Day, and Monday marked the start of the Republican National Convention.

Ohio has long been considered a crucial state to win the presidency.

It's commonly referred to as a swing state and a must-win to secure the presidency, but at least one political analyst doesn't share that viewpoint.

“Winning Ohio isn't really anything special. Whichever candidate tends to win the election overall will tend to win Ohio because it is demographically similar to the country," said Justin Buchler, a Case Western Reserve University associate professor who teaches political science.

Buchler called the swing-state concept a fallacy.

“Ohio can swing towards one candidate and whatever pushes the country in one direction will tend to push Ohio in the same direction and that means that a careless analyst will say, 'Aha! That makes Ohio special.' No, it just means that whatever pushed the country in one direction in one year also pushed Ohio in that direction for the exact same reason,” said Buchler.

Political author Kyle Kondik has a different outlook.

“I think it’s one of the maybe, you know, 10 or so most competitive, most important presidential swing states," said Kondik.

Kondik is an Ohio native currently serving as the managing editor of a nonpartisan newsletter at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

In 2016, he wrote the book, “The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President.”

But Kondik is not convinced Ohio is a bellwether state right now.

“By that, I mean, a state that's really reflective of the national voting and a state that you'd expect the voting there to kind of reflect the nation,” said Kondik. “No state over the past several decades, prior to 2016, no state better reflected the national voting than Ohio did. No state voted more often for the winning candidate than Ohio did.”

Both experts agreed Ohio tends to lean right and believe President Donald Trump’s recent call to boycott Goodyear likely won’t have much impact on Ohio voters, mainly because people’s opinion on Trump is fixed.

“I think it's a symbolic statement, and it's just the same kind of symbolic statement that Trump tends to make on a regular basis," said Buchler.

“I don’t necessarily know if Goodyear employees will necessarily side with the leadership of their company against Trump if they already liked Trump,” said Kondik.

At this point, Buchler says he simply doesn’t know who will win, whereas Kondik believes Biden seems to be leading nationally, but Trump may still be favored in the buckeye state.

In 2016, Trump won Ohio’s 18 electoral votes with an eight-point lead.