COLUMBUS, OH — APRIL 23: Supporters listen to former President Donald J. Trump at the Save America Rally, April 23, 2022, at the Delaware County Fairgrounds, Delaware, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes)
Leading to Election Day, there wasn’t much doubt about where Ohio would land in the presidential race, but Tuesday’s results still had plenty of surprises. The once and future president, Donald Trump, wasn’t hampered by the January 6 riot, 34 felony convictions, or his own increasingly vitriolic rhetoric — including the demonization of Haitian migrants living in Springfield. Instead of matching his 8-point margin of victory in 2016 and 2020, he exceeded it.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown out-performed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by almost 3 points, but still fell well short of his Republican challenger Bernie Moreno. As the Cleveland-area businessman noted in his victory speech, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance is vacating his own U.S. senate seat, making Moreno the state’s senior senator and kicking off a mad dash for Gov. Mike DeWine’s appointment to the open seat.
And despite polls indicating vast opposition to gerrymandering in principle, Ohio voters nevertheless rejected the anti-gerrymandering amendment, Issue 1.
Sorting through the results, several political scientists say the 2024 election firmly cements Republicans’ ascendancy in Ohio, and while Democrats can find some bright spots in the results, they face an uncertain future.
“That reluctance has gone away”
Ohio State political scientist Paul Beck put most of his attention into the U.S. Senate race and the Issue 1 contest.
“Moreno did not do as well, nearly as well, as Trump did in Ohio, but he still had a margin of support from Trump voters that was going to carry him through, and indeed it did,” Beck said. “Sherrod Brown has won in the past, but he’s won in the past against weaker opposition than Moreno proved to be.”
Still, he argued the biggest advantage Moreno brought to the table was Trump’s endorsement and the broader shift in Ohio’s partisan sentiments.
“I’ve been reluctant to call Ohio a red state,” he said, “even though there was a Republican advantage in Ohio. I think that reluctance has gone away.”
In a chicken or the egg style conundrum, Beck still questions whether voters’ allegiance is about the party or the candidate. He’s leaning toward the candidate, noting “Trump runs ahead of other Republicans.” But as for what happens in 2026? “We’ll see,” Beck said, arguing there’s a decent chance the incoming Trump administration over-reaches and is met with a Democratic rebound in the midterms.
“Now, whether that’s enough in Ohio to elect some Democrats statewide?” he wondered aloud without an answer. “There’ll be a lot of statewide races in 2026 and a real donnybrook for the nomination on the Republican side for governor. It’ll be interesting to see how all of that pans out.”
As for Issue 1’s defeat, Beck pointed first and foremost to the ballot language drafted by the amendment’s opponents. “I’ll call it dishonesty,” he said arguing many voters were confused about what a yes vote would mean. At the same time Beck argued the yes campaign deserved some of the blame as well, for framing a yes vote in negative terms — to ban gerrymandering — rather than portraying it as a vote for compromise or nonpartisanship.
An anchor instead of coattails
University of Akron political scientist David Cohen was surprised at Trump expanding his margin of victory. He had expected a Trump victory, but if anything Cohen expected the margin to decline modestly. He described Trump’s win as the “final nail in the coffin” for Ohio’s swing state status, and argued it had big implications down the ballot.
“That 11-point margin made it virtually impossible for Sherrod Brown to be able to win,” he said, “because that a huge hurdle to get over in terms of getting people to split their tickets.”
“His margin’s down in Cuyahoga County,” he noted comparing 2024’s unofficial results with Brown’s last election in 2018.
“I mean, you cannot expect, as a statewide Democratic candidate, to win if you’re vote percentage is dropping in places like Cuyahoga,” Cohen explained. “That’s where he has to run up the score.
He chalked up that relative lack of enthusiasm to the presidential candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket. Regardless of the reasons why Harris’ candidacy didn’t mobilize voters the way Joe Biden did in 2020, sagging turnout in a Democratic stronghold is difficult to overcome.
“So instead of there being coattails,” Cohen described, “that presidential candidate is then an anchor.”
At the same time, Cohen said, it’s notable that Democrats appear to have held on to the competitive U.S. House seats currently occupied by Reps. Greg Landsman, Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Sykes.
Looking forward, “I see a lot of red,” Cohen said. But even if Democrats face a difficult and uncertain future, he noted midterms are often a rude awakening for the sitting president’s party. With several statewide offices up for election — including the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance — Cohen’s biggest question is whether Brown decides to make a comeback.
“Is he going to challenge that person in the special election in 2026? Is he going to run for governor? What’s he going to do?” Cohen wondered aloud. “And then once Sherrod makes a decision, then it’ll be musical chairs on the Democratic side.”
The Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Brown’s campaign, but did not get an immediate response.
“A gut punch”
Brianna Mack, an assistant professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University compared the 2024 U.S. Senate race to the 2022 contest.
“While those numbers were coming in, I couldn’t help but feel like this was a replay of 2022,” she said. In that race, former Congressman Tim Ryan ran a labor and working class-focused campaign self-consciously modeled on Brown’s politics, but Ryan was unable to win labor strongholds like Trumbull and Mahoning counties that Brown won in 2018.
Now, in 2024, Brown himself was unable to recreate those victories.
“That is a gut punch, right?” Mack said.
One challenge she pointed to was the ground on which the campaigns fought. Without a general election debate, she said, campaign ads set the narrative.
“You know, I’m happy that I can finally go back to watching YouTube and not have to suffer through three and four Sherrod Brown and Moreno ads back-to-back,” she said, “But ultimately these ads ended up defining what the race was about for both of these candidates.”
She argued Democrats now have some soul searching to do. Mack
“I think it’s time to probably let the old guard go,” she said, “because while moderate Democrats are still attractive, all of the moderate leaders that people love are old as the hill.”
“While the progressive stuff is what we whipper snappers want,” she continued, “the rest of the party doesn’t want that, and the Republican Party has created a convincing narrative that argues those types of progressive stances will ruin folks’ bottom line.”
As for Vance’s open Senate seat, she’s interested in seeing who gets the nod, and curious where Democrats will turn come 2026. After Ohioans served Brown his “retirement papers,” as she framed it, Mack isn’t so sure the party’s best option is running it back.
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