The Ohio Senate race has been surprising because we’ve seen so little movement this entire year even though copious amounts of campaign funds have already been spent.
Originally thought of as one of the Republicans’ best conversion opportunities in the country because of the state’s voting history over the past eight years and lopsided registration figures, Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D) apparent resiliency has kept the race stagnant since January.
Sen. Brown has been in elective office, except for a two-year respite, consecutively since the beginning of 1975 and is completing his third term in the US Senate. Therefore, he knows how to win elections and is proving it with his campaign this year.
Despite Ohio being a strong state for former President Trump – he carried the Buckeye State by eight percentage points in both of his national elections – Sen. Brown is still performing well even though Mr. Trump is again consistently running nine to ten points ahead of both President Biden and Vice President Harris. From three polls conducted since late July when Ms. Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, Mr. Trump has posted a mean average lead of nine percentage points.
Yet, while Trump has been running well ahead of the polling margin of error, Sen. Brown continues to average a five point lead, meaning he is flipping the electorate 14 points from Trump’s standing, and has done so throughout the entire year. The latest poll, however, shows a weakening of the Brown advantage.
The new Emerson College survey (for The Hill newspaper; 9/3-5; 945 OH likely voters; multiple sampling techniques) sees Sen. Brown’s lead dropping to only two points over businessman Bernie Moreno (R), 46-44%.
While Sen. Brown is a proven strong incumbent, a prospective Republican tide at the top of the Ohio ticket could pose problems for him in November. Though polling suggested he was 13 points ahead going into his most recent election day in 2018, his victory margin proved to be only six percentage points when the actual ballots were tabulated.
Sen. Brown is also one of the most prolific fundraisers during the cycle. He ranks second to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in campaign receipts through the end of June at $52.8 million. Actually, Rep. David Trone (D-MD) in his failed Senate primary race posted the largest receipt total at $63.3 million, but 98.7% of the campaign’s money came in the form of loans from the candidate. Neither Sens. Cruz nor Brown has ingested any of their own money into their respective campaigns.
Sen. Brown’s $52.8 million dwarfed Mr. Moreno’s $15.8 million that he recorded in campaign receipts during the same period. Therefore, it is expected that Sen. Brown will have a major resource advantage headed into the campaign’s final stretch.
The outside spending numbers balance the financial equation to a degree. Combining the outside organization, including institutional political party money, spending for the Republican and against the Democrat in the Ohio Senate race totals just under $51 million. Expenditures for the Democrat and against the Republican totals $22.7 million.
Together, the $73+ million previously spent in the Ohio Senate race from non-candidate sources has made this campaign the top such recipient of all Senate races; and, we can expect a great deal more in the weeks leading up to the beginning of Ohio early voting, which commences on October 3rd.
Ohio is a partisan registration state, but 71.1% of the electorate registers as unaffiliated. Republican registration stands at 1.508 million, while Democrats number only 817,063, according to the most recent published report in early May. In the March 19th primary, Republican turnout virtually doubled that of the Democrats, 1.16 million individuals to 576,268. This gives us some idea as to where the large segment of unaffiliated voters falls, since a person registered as such can choose in which primary to cast a ballot.
While Sen. Brown has run a wholly Ohio based campaign, and continued to establish a consistent polling lead, the latest data suggests we could be seeing a changing trend develop especially since the underlying numbers pertaining to turnout and registration clearly favor the Republicans.
We offer this political insights report for your information and not as a predictor or representative of opinions of HBS or its employees.
