Ohio is shaping up to be a top battleground state this year, and MS NOW’s election team now characterizes its Senate race as a Toss Up.

We are updating the race based primarily on multiple high-quality polls showing a very tight contest, as well as the candidates running and the broader political environment.

The contest is technically a special election to fill out the remainder of Vice President JD Vance’s term. Republican Jon Husted, who was appointed to the seat after Vance took office in 2025, is running to defend it for the first time.

The candidates and structural forces

While Ohio is still often thought of as a bellwether state, it has voted reliably Republican in recent presidential elections. The state has shifted to the right during President Donald Trump’s political rise, backing him in all three of his presidential campaigns.

Ohio’s last few Senate races, however, have been more competitive. Vance won by six points in 2022, while Republican Bernie Moreno beat Democrat Sherrod Brown by less than four points in 2024, narrowly ousting Brown from office after he served three terms in the Senate.

Brown’s showing two years ago is more impressive than it might seem at first blush. A relatively well-liked senator with working-class appeal, he was likely dragged down by his party’s brand. He came close to hanging onto his seat in an unfavorable environment for Democrats. That four-point loss meant he ran ahead of Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump by 11 points.

And 2026 looks to be a much better environment for Democrats.

Trump’s approval rating and the GOP’s favorability ratings are underwater amid an unpopular war and widespread economic dissatisfaction. Brown is running again, and polls indicate he has a real shot at flipping the seat.

The polls

No single poll should be viewed as definitive, but a clear pattern has emerged in recent weeks. A Fox News poll made waves four weeks ago, showing Brown with a lead outside the poll’s margin of sampling error. Since then, two more high-quality polls have shown a very competitive race: one commissioned by AARP and fielded by a bipartisan team of pollsters, and the other released this week by the New York Times and Siena College. Both show a three-point race, which is well within the margin of error, and they differ on which candidate is ahead. This is what polling in a true toss-up race looks like.

Both recent polls indicate an enthusiasm gap favoring Democrats. While Trump won Ohio by 11 points, the polls show a midterm electorate that backed him by just 8 to 9 points. Consistent with typical midterm turnout dynamics, their likely voter models show Harris ‘24 voters with a higher propensity to vote than Trump voters — a difference large enough to help boost Democrats by a few points. The rest of the estimated shift from 2024 comes from the sliver of Trump voters flipping to Brown.

In the NYT/Siena poll, Brown is winning independent voters by over 20 points. But that is still only enough to leave him within three points of winning, as Republicans are the largest group.

The poll also contains a warning sign for Democrats. It finds Ohio voters prefer a GOP-controlled Senate to a Democratic majority by six percentage points. That margin is wider than Husted’s narrow lead in the poll, which suggests he has room to grow if Senate control becomes the defining issue in the race. Even in this political environment, Ohio may remain tough for Democrats to flip.

Zoom out…

Democrats currently hold 47 Senate seats, so they need to gain four to retake the majority. That means defending all of their seats while flipping North Carolina and three other Republican-held seats.

We rate Maine and Ohio as their best pickup opportunities — both are Toss Ups. Even if Democrats win both, they would have to flip at least one more GOP state to secure a majority. Their path runs through Alaska, Ohio, or Texas — all of which we currently rate as Lean Republican.

Note: Our race ratings are informed by polling data, reporting about the campaigns, recent electoral trends, and primary results. They reflect our current thinking, as if the elections were being held today, and will be updated regularly until Election Day.

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