WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in a tight race for the White House, but in Ohio, it’s a contest further down the ballot that has been getting the bulk of the attention in the Nov. 5 general election.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s bid for a fourth term is shaping up to be his toughest to date, as his party tries to cling to a narrow majority in the chamber. His Republican opponent is Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland businessman who had Trump’s backing in the GOP’s competitive March primary.
Ohio has fallen off the list of presidential battlegrounds: In 2020, Joe Biden became the first president since fellow Democrat John F. Kennedy to win the White House without winning Ohio. But the Harris-Trump matchup has loomed over the contest that will play a role in deciding the Senate’s balance of power.
In July, Brown called on then-presumptive presidential nominee Biden to drop out of the race a month after his shaky debate performance against Trump. He endorsed Harris to replace Biden on the ticket but skipped the Democratic National Convention in August. Moreno has accused Brown of distancing himself from Harris, which the senator’s campaign has dismissed.
Fellow Ohioan and GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance and Trump have also kept a spotlight on the state, most notably by spreading unfounded conspiracy theories about Haitian migrants in Springfield.
The race is on track to be the most expensive Senate contest this cycle. The campaigns, parties and outside groups have spent more than $400 million on campaign ads, according to the campaign ad tracking firm AdImpact. Campaign finance reports show that Brown has spent more than $80 million on the campaign as of the start of October, far eclipsing the $19 million Moreno spent in the same period. But the two began the month on an almost equal footing in terms of cash in the bank; Brown had $4.5 million while Moreno had $3.2 million. Moreno loaned his campaign $4.5 million over the course of the Republican primary.
In addition to the Senate contest, two Democratic Ohio congresswomen also face competitive challengers. In the 9th Congressional District, longtime incumbent Marcy Kaptur seeks a 22nd term against Republican Derek Merrin. In the 13th District, first-term U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes faces Republican Kevin Coughlin.
Decision Notes
In both the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 U.S. Senate contest between Vance and then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, both Biden and Ryan took sizable leads in the vote count when the first votes were reported after polls closed at 7:30 p.m. ET. These were comprised of mail and early in-person votes, which have tended to favor Democrats in recent elections. Those leads steadily eroded over the next two hours as more Republican-friendly votes cast on Election Day were included in the count, with Republicans Trump and Vance each overtaking their Democratic opponents in the vote count by about 9:30 p.m. ET. Both Biden and Ryan went on to lose statewide, Biden with 45% of the vote and Ryan with 47%.
In statewide races, Republicans tend to post their strongest numbers in western Ohio along the Indiana border, central Ohio in the ring of counties beyond Columbus and to the south along the Kentucky and West Virginia borders. They do well in most of the rest of the state as well, although sometimes by slightly smaller margins.
The Democratic bases are clustered around Ohio’s biggest cities of Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and, to a lesser extent, Akron. They also do well in smaller Athens County, home of Ohio University. Biden, Ryan and Hillary Clinton all carried these six counties in their last unsuccessful statewide runs. In addition, Biden and Ryan carried the Dayton area, while Clinton and Ryan carried Lorain County on the Lake Erie shore. Clinton also won Mahoning County in the northeast in 2016.
Brown should be able to hold all six of the core Biden-Clinton-Ryan counties on election night. Whether he wins reelection will also depend on how he does in Montgomery (home of Dayton), Lorain and Mahoning counties, as well as the seven additional counties he carried the last time he ran in 2018. They are Ottawa and Wood outside Toledo, Erie bordering the lake and Ashtabula, Lake, Portage and Trumbull in the northeast. He’ll also need to post big margins in vote-rich Franklin (home of Columbus) and Cuyahoga (home of Cleveland), where he hovered around the 70% mark in 2018.
The Associated Press doesn’t make projections and will declare a winner only when it has determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race hasn’t been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, like candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear it hasn’t declared a winner and explain why.
Recounts in Ohio are automatic if the margin is less than 0.25% of the total vote in statewide races or 0.5% in district races. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.
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Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut and Maya Sweedler contributed to this report.
