- Republican JD Vance has a slim lead over Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan in the open Ohio Senate race.
- In a new Emerson College poll, Vance leads Ryan 45%-42%, with both men holding positive ratings with voters.
- While Ohio has tilted to the right in recent cycles, Ryan is running as a political moderate.
Ohio Republican Senate candidate JD Vance has a narrow three-point lead over Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in the race to succeed two-term GOP Sen. Rob Portman, a newly released Emerson College poll shows.
The survey found that Vance had 45% support among voters in the Buckeye State, while Ryan attracted the support of 42% of respondents; Ten percent of respondents indicated they were undecided, while four percent said they would support another candidate.
In recent election cycles, Ohio has transitioned from a Midwestern swing state to a Republican-leaning bastion where the party dominates most state offices and the legislature.
Ohio won the last Democratic presidential primary in 2011. It was Barack Obama in 2012, and even if Sen. Sherrod Brown wins re-election in 2018, he could face tough competition in 2024 despite his popular statewide overall.
The last time Democrats won a gubernatorial election was against then-Republicans. Ted Strickland’s 2006 win.
In the year Vance, an Ohio native who released his memoir “Hillybilly Elegy” in the summer of 2016, had been a political candidate for years before the book jumped into the Senate race. It has often been cited in recent cycles as an explanation for cultural and electoral changes caused by rural voters.
U.S. Representative and Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan speaks to supporters at a rally in Lorain, Ohio on May 2, 2022.
Drew Anger/Getty Images
But Ryan — who grew up in the Mahoning Valley and has served in Congress since 2003 — has so far shown considerable strength for a Democratic candidate running in a GOP-leaning state.
In the Emerson survey, 54% of respondents had a favorable opinion of Ryan, compared to 50% for Vance.
Vance had a 20% lead with male respondents, while Ryan had a 15% edge among female respondents.
Ryan, who rallied independents and Republicans to support his campaign, managed to stay positive with voters despite President Joe Biden’s 39% approval rating in Ohio. (In the election, the president’s disapproval rating was 56 percent.)
In the year Former President Donald Trump, who won Ohio by 8% in 2016 and 2020, led Biden 53%-39% in 2024, reflecting the former commander-in-chief’s enduring popularity in the state.
Half (50%) of all voters in the poll said the economy and taxes were their top issues in the midterm elections, followed by abortion (12%) and health care (10%).
In the same survey, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who is running for re-election, was leading his Democratic opponent, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, by 16 percentage points (49-33%).
Emerson College polled 925 voters on August 15 and August 16. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
