Ohio voters have a strange choice on 3 November: Brown, the senator they fired two years ago, or Husted, the senator nobody elected. (NPR, Ohio Governor’s Office)
Jon Husted, the Republican, has been in the Senate since January 2025, when Governor Mike DeWine handed him JD Vance’s vacated seat. Before that, he was lieutenant governor. (Ohio Governor’s Office)
As lieutenant governor he championed $2.5 billiocn in tax breaks for data centers, the warehouse-sized computer farms now sitting in Ohio cornfields and raising everyone’s electric bill. Brown’s ads call him “the face of data centers.” (News 5 Cleveland, Ohio Public Utilities Commission)
Husted voted to keep the Iran war going. (PolitiFact) And he said Ohioans living in poverty “are just not very experienced at navigating the real world.” (Cleveland Monitor)
Sherrod Brown, the Democrat, spent 18 years in the Senate talking about the dignity of work. In 2024, Ohio voted him out in the most expensive Senate race in American history. (13 ABC) He is back, and the polls put him about 3 points ahead. (270toWin)
But the race is less about the canadates. In a September poll, 41 percent of Ohioans said their vote this year is a vote against Trump. Twenty-five percent said it is a vote for him. (Marist Poll, September 2026)
Trump carried Ohio by 11 points in 2024 (NPR) but won’t be enough to save Husted.
Ohio votes its wallet. Trump won Ohio three times on jobs.
In 2018, Brown won on work. (Ballotpedia)
In 2024 Brown lost when Trump persuaded Ohio voters he could deliver a better economy.
This year:
tariffs on the parts Ohio factories import are raising prices. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Spectrum News)
diesel is at $6.50 (AAA) because of a war Husted voted to continue (PolitiFact)
electric rates are climbing because of the data centers Husted supported. (FactCheck.org, News 5 Cleveland)
Ohio doesn’t care which party fixes the grocery bill but it does oust the party that raise the bill goes. This year the bill went up.
Inglehart and Welzel call this Survival values. An emphasis on economic and physical security when people feel threatened or uncertain. (World Values Survey)
Ohio does not like being talked down to. Brown wears a rumpled suit and talks about work. Vance won in 2022 as the hillbilly who wrote a book about hillbillies. Bernie Moreno won in 2024 as a car dealer. (NPR)
None of them ever told a poor Ohioan he was bad at real life. Husted did, (Cleveland Monitor) and then handed $2.5 billion in tax breakes to out-of-state tech companies while Ohio families got the power bill. (News 5 Cleveland) Hofstede calls this low Power Distance: voters who expect their leaders to generally equal to them. (Hofstede Insights)
Ohio does not like being told how to live.
In August 2023, the Republican legislature tried to make it harder for voters to amend the constitution. Ohio said no, 57 to 43. (Washington Post)
In November 2023, Ohio put abortion rights in the constitution, 57 to 43, (Ohio Secretary of State) and 18 Trump counties voted yes. (Statehouse News Bureau)
In November 2023, Ohio legalized marijuana, 57 to 43. (Ohio Secretary of State)
Now, Republicans are running misleading ads about transgender children, attacking Brown over positions he never took. (FactCheck.org, PolitiFact) They have not learned the lesson. Hofstede calls this Indulgence: a government that lets people live life they way they see fit rather than imposing strict social restraints. (Hofstede Insights) Ohio votes indulgent.
Most likely winner: Brown. When Trump is on the ballot, and the economy is good, Ohio votes Republican, and Power Distance and Indulgence matter much less. Trump is not on the ballot and the economy is bad. That makes Power Distance and Indulgence a problem for Husted because he is the costly, condescending, and controlling candidate.
Ohio won’t put him in office.
Saturday’s Edition (paid): Michigan and Maine, plus the full Senate count after 3 November.
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