Republican Senator Jon Husted and former Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, are locked in a dead heat in the latest poll of the Ohio U.S. Senate race released on Thursday. The race is expected to be one of the most competitive races of this year's midterms and could end up deciding whether Democrats or Republicans win control of the upper chamber of Congress.
Although Ohio backed President Donald Trump by double digits in 2024, Democrats see the race as competitive due to a stronger national environment and the candidacy of Brown, who has won statewide in the past despite the state’s rightward drift. The new poll pointed to a tight race. Brown’s support stood at 45.6 percent, while Husted had the backing of 45.3 percent of respondents—a statistical tie.
Other candidates received about 3.5 percent of the vote, while 5.5 percent were undecided, according to the poll, which surveyed 695 likely voters September 21-23 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. Brown had a large advantage among unaffiliated voters, winning by 17 points, 51 percent to 34 percent, the poll found. The poll comes just days after Husted broke with Trump to call for an end to the Iran war, which has become a vulnerability for Republicans ahead of the midterms.
"The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible so that we can lower gas prices," Husted told Politico on Tuesday. Newsweek reached out to the Brown and Husted campaigns for comment via email. The Ohio race is a special election after Husted was appointed to fill the seat previously held by Vice President JD Vance.
Brown, who lost reelection in 2024, is running to make a comeback in Ohio, a former battleground that has become more conservative in the Trump era. The Quantus Insights poll is in line with other recent surveys showing a competitive race, though most polls have given Brown a modest lead. Brown was up by 3 points in a survey from Bowling Green State University and YouGov.
He received support from 48 percent of respondents to 45 percent for Husted. It surveyed 1,000 likely voters September 1-10 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. An InsiderAdvantage poll gave Brown a 5-point advantage, 47 percent to 42 percent.
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