Ohio

Democrat Sherrod Brown beat Republican Jon Husted for the Senate by 4.9 points, and Democrat Amy Acton beat Republican Vivek Ramaswamy for governor by 7.9. Republicans had held both offices, in a state Donald Trump carried by 11.2 points two years earlier. Acton’s win ends 16 years of Republican governors, and she will be the state’s first woman and first Jewish governor, MultiState reports.¹ The U.S. House delegation went from 10 Republicans and five Democrats to eight Democrats and seven Republicans. Democrats Brian Poindexter, Don Leonard and Kristina Knickerbocker won Republican seats by 9.9, 6.6 and 1.6 points, each in a district Trump had carried.

Three more Republican offices went to Democrats, each by less than the Senate race. Allison Russo won secretary of state by 3.5 points, Seth Walsh won treasurer by 1.1 and John J. Kulewicz won attorney general by 0.6. The Republican candidates for attorney general and treasurer, Keith Faber and Jay Edwards, conceded. MultiState calls these the Democrats’ first down-ballot wins since 2008. Republican Frank LaRose, the outgoing secretary of state, won the race for auditor by 1.6 points, the one statewide office his party kept.¹

Compared with the 2024 presidential vote, the Senate race moved 16.1 points toward the Democrats, and the governor’s race 19.1. Brown drew 91 votes for every 100 Kamala Harris won here; Husted drew 65 for every 100 of Trump’s. The Senate vote came to 111% of the 2022 total and 80% of the 2024 presidential vote.

The regions moved within a few points of one another. The Cleveland and Columbus areas, with 19% and 18% of the vote, went to D+23.7 and D+20.3. The Cincinnati area moved least, 13.7 points, and changed sides all the same, from R+9.8 to D+3.9, as did the Dayton area, to D+3.3. The small towns and rural counties moved furthest, 17.0 points, and stayed Republican at R+31.7. The smaller metro areas finished at R+1.7, from R+18.3.

The largest of the eight counties that voted for Trump in 2024 and for Brown this year is Lorain County, in the Cleveland metro area. It went from R+5.7 to D+11.2 on 129,818 votes. Two counties Trump had carried by more crossed with it: Trumbull County, in the Youngstown area, went from R+16.8 to D+2.6, and Portage County, near Akron, from R+15.5 to D+2.7. The three largest counties moved less than the state did, Hamilton County least at 10.5 points. No county moved toward the Republicans.

Republicans no longer control all of state government. They keep both chambers, with 22 of 33 Senate seats and, in our count, 56 of 99 House seats, down from 65. A veto override takes three-fifths of the members elected to each chamber, which is 60 votes in the House and 20 in the Senate.^{1, 2} Republicans lost that margin in the House, where Ballotpedia says they had held it since the 2012 election, and cannot reach it even if they win every race still being counted, so they cannot override Acton without Democratic votes.^{1, 3, 4} “She will be an equal partner with the legislature because she can veto any bill that comes out of the legislature, and we can now sustain that veto,” House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn told News 5 Cleveland on November 4.⁴

The outgoing legislature, which still has the three-fifths margin in both chambers, meets in a lame-duck session before Acton takes office in January.^{5, 6} Some Republican lawmakers have talked of reducing the new executives’ roles, News 5 reported, and one representative is introducing a resolution to lower the override threshold from 60 votes to 50, an idea House Speaker Matt Huffman and Senate President Rob McColley both questioned.^{7, 8} The outgoing Republican governor, Mike DeWine, rejected the proposals. “I don’t think any governor is going to approve anything, whether you’re Democrat or Republican, that would dramatically change the powers of the governor,” he told News 5.⁷

The election also changed who sits on the body that draws legislative maps. The Ohio Redistricting Commission has seven members: the governor, the auditor, the secretary of state and four legislative appointees, two named by each party’s leaders.⁹ Republicans held all three statewide seats. Democrats now have two of them, with Acton and Russo, and LaRose keeps the auditor’s seat for Republicans.¹ Congressional maps are the General Assembly’s to draw first, by a bill that needs three-fifths of each house and at least half the members of each of the two largest parties.¹⁰ As secretary of state, Russo also becomes the state’s top election official.¹¹

A constitutional amendment passes in Ohio with a majority of those voting on it.^{12, 13} Issue 3, the only statewide measure, passed with 65.3% yes. It writes the state’s voter identification requirement into the constitution: photo ID to vote in person, and photo ID or a signature with another identifier to vote absentee. It changes nothing in current practice and means a future change to the requirement would need another statewide vote.^{1, 14}

Democrats won both state Supreme Court seats on the ballot. Justice Jennifer Brunner, who had been the court’s last remaining Democrat, defeated Republican Colleen O’Donnell, and Marilyn Zayas, an appeals court judge from Hamilton County, defeated Republican Justice Daniel Hawkins. Republicans are left with a 5-2 majority.¹⁵

Republicans kept eight of the seats they held on this ballot: the auditor’s office and seven U.S. House seats. The narrowest was the auditor’s race, at 1.6 points. Next was the 8th District, where Warren Davidson won by 4.3 in a district Trump carried by 15.4. Husted carried 73 of the state’s 88 counties, and the small towns and rural counties still voted Republican by 31.7 points. Republicans also kept both legislative chambers and their majority on the Supreme Court, and held the open Senate District 13 by about 1 point.^{1, 4}

The seat Brown won is on the ballot again in 2028. This was a special election for the seat JD Vance left to become vice president, and it comes up for a full six-year term then.¹⁶ Brown won it by 4.9 points in a state that voted R+11.2 for president in 2024. The governor serves a four-year term and may hold the office for no more than two in succession.¹⁷ State Court Report writes that ideological control of the Ohio Supreme Court will be before voters in 2028.¹⁵

The state House count is not final. Our count has 56 Republicans and 43 Democrats; MultiState’s tally stood at 53 to 42 with four Republican-held seats still being counted.¹ Republicans led by 19, 56 and 126 votes in Districts 29, 44 and 75, each inside the margin for an automatic recount, News 5 Cleveland reported.⁴