Ohio officials approved a bid last week to get recreational and medical marijuana legalization on the 3 November ballot. Thus far, Ohio is the only state where voters will consider pot legalization in the 2015 election. But that’s not because many states aren’t already eyeing their own marijuana campaigns.

In fact, a number of states, including California, Massachusetts and Arizona, are already laying the groundwork to legalize recreational pot. They just won’t put it on the ballot until 2016, lining up with the presidential election.

The conventional wisdom has been that such votes are more likely to pass if they’re held during presidential elections when turnout is significantly higher. The first two states to legalize marijuana, Colorado and Washington, did so after voters passed ballot initiatives in the 2012 election.

“Typically the more people who turn out to vote, the more support we see for ending marijuana prohibition,” said Mason Tvert, director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, which is helping to organize many of these state campaigns. “We certainly believe [the Ohio] initiative would fare better in 2016.”

ResponsibleOhio, the group organizing this year’s ballot initiative in the Buckeye State, created a schism among legalization advocates when it decided not to wait until 2016.

A separate group, Ohioans to End Prohibition, has been organizing support with the goal of a 2016 ballot initiative. After the news broke that Ohioans would vote on legalization in 2015, the group posted a short missive on Facebook: “Congratulations to the folks at ResponsibleOhio for making the ballot!” At the end of the post, they added: “Note: We still don’t support ResponsibleOhio.”

What’s indisputable, though, is that legalization advocates across the country have momentum. Recreational marijuana has been on a winning streak since 2012, and by 2016 the number of states embracing legalization could more than double. Four states – Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska – currently allow recreational sales of marijuana to people 21 years of age and older. Washington DC also legalized recreational pot by ballot initiative, but is still fighting with Congress over a legislative move to legalize sale.

Organizers in Nevada have already qualified for the 2016 ballot, while elsewhere they continue to gather the necessary signatures. Polling, though early, is generally positive for reformers, with surveys in California, Massachusetts, and Michigan showing voters in favor of legalized marijuana.

Four states currently allow recreational marijuana use: Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Photograph: Rainer Jensen/EPA

Tvert said that while his organization supports legalization everywhere, it directs its resources towards those ballot initiatives organizers think are most likely to succeed. They base their analysis on a number of factors, including the state’s history, where support currently stands, and whether there’s been an ongoing dialogue about marijuana. For 2016, Tvert saw Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine, Arizona and California as the most winnable states. He said his group was also keeping an eye on developments in Missouri and Michigan.

“If we had unlimited resources, we would go after places where it would foster more discourse,” Tvert said. Instead, he argued, “you could make a strong case that successfully passing initiatives” does more to encourage reform in tougher states like Oklahoma than “putting something on the ballot there and it failing”. In other words, success begets success. Eventually, Oklahomans might start to wonder why their neighbors in Colorado not only get to enjoy legalized pot, but also the millions of tax dollars that come with it.

But there’s no indication thus far that Oklahoma is likely to espouse that attitude. Earlier this year, Oklahoma and Nebraska officials launched a legal challenge to Colorado’s legalization, arguing that it has ushered in a flood of illicit pot across state lines.

Ohio, accustomed to being in the political limelight every four years, could make history by becoming the first state to go directly from banning medical marijuana to legalizing pot not only for medicinal but also recreational purposes. Relative to the states that have already passed pot ballot initiatives, the midwestern state is considered socially conservative.

ResponsibleOhio executive director Ian James said his group targeted 2015 precisely because there will be lower turnout. “Seventy-four per cent of votes in off-off year elections comes from major metros and college counties. Those tend to be more our voters,” he said. In effect, James is betting that thousands of young voters who wouldn’t have shown up otherwise will turn out this November to vote for legalization, enough to swing a low-turnout election.

In addition, James argued: “Having a smaller turnout lets us have a much deeper, more adult discussion with voters. Unlike in a presidential year when it becomes more of a partisan vote, we don’t have that partisan angle to this.”

The legalization initiatives in Oregon, and Alaska and Washington DC all passed in the November 2014 election, despite the lagging turnout that’s typically associated with midterm elections.

The only public polling on the matter, conducted by Quinnipiac University, found 52% of voters in favor and 44% opposed to legalization in Ohio. According to ResponsibleOhio’s internal polling, support is, unsurprisingly, highest among young voters and, surprisingly, extraordinarily high even among Republicans between the ages of 18 and 35, with around 80% in favor.

“You’ve got younger voters who wonder: ‘Why isn’t this legal?’” James explained. “This is their Barack Obama. This is their marriage equality.”

The group submitted 320,267 valid signatures to get the ballot initiative approved, just clearing the minimum of 305,591 signatures from Ohio voters.

If the initiative passes, advocates say, Ohio could enjoy a significant tax revenue windfall, as states like Colorado have, in addition to law enforcement savings on the $100m the state now spends enforcing marijuana prohibition. “You’re filling potholes with pot money,” James said. And as in other states, the initiative also aims to address racial disparities. In Ohio, blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana-related offenses than white Ohioans, despite similar rates of usage.

But critics in the state legislature are taking aim at language in the initiative which, if approved, would establish just 10 facilities across the state where marijuana could be grown. The campaign offered investors who made campaign contributions exclusive rights to these facilities. Opponents argue that this would create a monopoly – James said such a charge was “horseshit” – and have proposed a separate ballot initiative this November to forbid such cartels. According to the Ohio constitution, if two ballot issues conflict and both pass, the one that receives more votes will trump the other.