Republican nominee Donald Trump locked down an important state in his Electoral College strategy Tuesday, winning Ohio four years after it backed President Obama for re-election.

Ohio was one of the most fiercely contested states, important to both campaigns — but absolutely crucial to Trump. No Republican has won the White House without it.

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Fox News called the race just past 10:00 p.m. Tuesday, with Trump taking 53.3 percent of the vote, with 66 percent of precincts reporting.

Republicans had hoped to win Ohio on the strength of disaffected, white working-class voters, and there is evidence he overperformed the generic Republican candidate in working-class precincts in the economically hard-hit Youngstown area. GOP officials in the closing days of the campaign had pointed to hopeful signs from absentee ballots, which were down in Democratic strongholds and up in some counties that backed Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.

Trump and Clinton both visited repeatedly and aired TV ads.

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In a sign of the state’s importance, the Republican Party selected Cleveland as the site of their national convention in July. Favorite son Gov. John Kasich had hoped to accept the nomination. Instead, he skipped the event altogether and refused to endorse Trump.

The state’s Republican senator, Rob Portman, won in a landslide in a race initially thought to be a nail-biter. That may also have aided Trump’s cause.