Buckeye Battleground

Can Sen. Sherrod Brown thread the needle and win reelection in Ohio?

Republicans remain overwhelming favorites to win the Senate. The race for West Virginia’s open seat, vacated by the retiring Joe Manchin, is all over but the shouting. This puts the GOP at 50 seats—enough for the majority if Trump wins, and one short if Harris prevails. Next on the Republican target list are Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. As I wrote back in April, the GOP is probably favored to defeat Tester, though he continues to hang tough in the polling we’ve seen. Sherrod Brown, meanwhile, has a slightly easier hill to climb and, three months out, the race is a tossup. 

There have been only a couple high-quality polls since Bernie Moreno captured the Republican nomination. Both Marist and AARP/Fabrizio/Impact show Brown with a decent lead and the crosstab averages confirm Brown’s strength.  

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In addition to corralling 94 percent of Democrats (no small feat when Biden was running), Brown is winning independents by 13 points. He wins college voters by 16 and loses non-college by just 3 points. Perhaps most importantly, however, the pair of polls show him pulling 13 percent of Republicans. Maintaining this crossover support will be crucial in a polarized presidential year.

With such strong numbers for Brown, why do most forecasters see the race as neck-and-neck? 

Pundits are correctly pricing in that Ohio undecideds break heavily Republican. Do not be surprised if Brown holds his polling lead through September before Moreno pulls close—or ahead—as Election Day nears. At this point in 2022, Tim Ryan actually led J.D. Vance by 4 points in polling averages. By mid-October, however, as more voters tuned in and the undecided share dropped, Vance shot into the lead. He won by 6 points. Democrats would be wise to avoid a premature celebration based on favorable summer polling.   

If Brown hopes to significantly outrun Harris, he will need to stitch together a unique coalition of former and future Democrats. The white working-class voters that stretch across Lake Erie, the Mahoning River Valley, and down through coal country were once a core constituency for Ohio Democrats. No longer. As the map below demonstrates, these voters have rocketed rightwards.

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Brown won’t need to hit Obama’s margins, but he will have to win over tens of thousands of non-college whites who rarely vote blue these days. Brown does have a record of success in industrial and Appalachian Ohio, but Split Ticket’s “wins above replacement” model found Brown with a score of just 1.2 in 2018—indicating a performance not much better than a generic Democrat. 

In addition to restoring the white working-class margins of Democrats past, Brown will need to juice urban turnout and hit record numbers in suburban counties around Columbus and Cincinnati. No small task—yet one that Democrats believe Brown is uniquely equipped to handle. So far the polling and fundraising numbers support their case, but Ohio has played the white whale for Democrats before. For now, the race remains a true toss-up.