President Donald Trump's political rise quickly transformed Ohio from a perennial swing state to a solid red bastion, with Republicans now in full control of state government.
But Trump's disastrous second term may finally change Democrats' fortunes in the Buckeye State. A poll released this week by the left-leaning firm EMC Research shows Democrats not just leading both Ohio's gubernatorial and Senate elections but also surpassing the 50% mark—an important indicator for the ultimate outcome of the races.
Democratic candidate Amy Acton, who is running unopposed for the gubernatorial nomination, leads Republican front-runner Vivek Ramaswamy by a whopping 10 percentage points, 53% to 43%, among likely voters.
Meanwhile, former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown leads incumbent GOP Sen. Jon Husted, 51% to 47%.
And that result came before Husted made a boneheaded comment about how poor people are, in his eyes, basically stupid.
"People living in poverty are just not very experienced at navigating the real world, right?" Husted told a right-wing podcaster earlier this week. "I remember talking to one young lady who said, 'Well, I don't really know how money works at a grocery store,' because she grew up and has lived all of her adult life using SNAP cards to buy groceries."
That probably won’t go over well with the 12% of Ohioans who receive food stamp benefits and whom Husted views as dopes. Expect to see that comment in Brown's ad campaign.
Ultimately, rising prices—which will be supercharged by the war in Iran—and Trump's violent immigration crackdowns may be putting Republican states in play. Trump's approval is underwater in places he carried by double-digits in the 2024 election, such as Ohio, Iowa, and Texas—all three of which have gubernatorial and Senate contests this fall.
Political prognosticators have been comparing the 2026 midterm with the one in 2018, when an unpopular Trump helped Democrats retake the House by a large margin, despite that the party also lost ground in the Senate.
However, as the economy flounders due to Trump's disastrous tariff policy and the ill-planned war he launched in Iran, 2026 could look more like the 2006 midterms, when backlash to then-President George W. Bush's Iraq War led Democrats to retake control not only of the House but also the Senate—even with an extremely unfavorable Senate map that year.
Trump’s approval has fallen off a cliff with independents.
"First thing I look at in a poll is Independents. Being -38 w/ Indies before a midterm is catastrophic," Democratic operative Jim Messina, who helped former President Barack Obama win the White House in 2012, wrote in a post on X, referring to Trump being 38 points underwater on average with independents. "Closest that another prez was to this w/ Indies in March of a 2nd term midterm election year was Bush in '06... and that was w/ backlash to Iraq, Katrina, & Dubai Ports deal.
"Meanwhile, Hispanic voters, who Republicans were adamant were realigning to become part of a permanent GOP coalition, have shifted back toward Democrats amid Trump’s masked immigration goons racially profiling Latinos to help meet an arbitrary deportation goal. And it’s hard to see how Trump turns things around for his party, given that experts say the price hikes from the oil crisis Trump created in the Middle East will take months to reverse—and that’s if the conflict stops today. There’s no indication that the war is anywhere near an end, as Iran is digging in for a prolonged fight.
Republicans are speeding toward catastrophe in November.
