Democrats are leading the Ohio Senate race ahead of the general elections next year in which it’ll be on the ballot, per recent polling from Emerson College. The polling was completed November 13. The Democratic incumbent, Sherrod Brown, is running for another term, and the polling pitted him against several possible GOP challengers, including the state’s current Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
Brown led three Republican opponents by margins reaching 10 percent, with a lead of five percent against LaRose. Democrats will be running in a slew of potentially tough Senate races next year, including West Virginia — now likely to flip to the Republicans with Joe Manchin’s retirement, Arizona, Montana, and Nevada. So far, Brown has posted impressive fundraising numbers, surpassing in the third quarter at least Bernie Moreno and Matt Dolan — two Republicans also included in polling as potential November 2024 challengers.
In the meantime, Democrats in Ohio can point to the recent success of a proposed amendment to the state Constitution establishing a baseline of abortion rights — a success achieved despite the often GOP lean of the state as a whole, which has a Republican governor and went to Trump in both the 2020 and 2016 general elections. Ohio voters even just approved a state Constitutional amendment allowing for adult-use cannabis products in the state, meaning the category other than medicinal. Democrats have also recently seen electoral successes elsewhere, holding onto the governor’s chair in Kentucky and taking unified control of the Virginia legislature heading into next year.
Elsewhere, the GOP nominee for Senate in Arizona could be Kari Lake, the failed Republican contender for governor who’s incorporated election denial into her platform. Strangely, she is still judicially challenging her already upheld 2022 election loss while also running for Senate, pushing for a redo of at least portions of the gubernatorial contest despite no showing so far of systematic problems actually determining the outcome. She’s previously even resisted the judicial push to show more specific evidence before moving forward with the outcomes she wants.
