John Stover, president of Ohio Value Voters, says what might be most concerning about Senator Jon Husted (R) trailing in the polls is that the poll of likely voters conducted by the Trafalgar Group earlier this month shows him behind populist Democrat Sherrod Brown by three points.
Early on, an Emerson College Polling survey from August 2025 had Husted ahead of Brown by six points (50% to 44%), but more recent polling shows Sherrod Brown leading or the race tightly deadlocked as the Nov. 3, 2026, special election approaches.
Trafalgar, which has a reputation for being more accurate and less biased toward Democrats, says the survey had a response rate of close to 5.5%, with 1,085 respondents ultimately surveyed.
"It'd be interesting to know just how many independent Democrats … don't want to come out and give information to somebody on a phone poll or even online or whatever it might be because they're concerned, especially if they're a Democrat, to let somebody know that they can't support [Brown]," Stover poses.
Noting that the margin of error is only two to three percentage points, he wonders how many people Trafalgar would have to talk to before they had enough to make a good sample size.
Ohio's recent Republican voting history, changing poll averages, differences in methodology and turnout models, and the variation among individual polls add to his skepticism.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) appointed Husted to the U.S. Senate on January 17, 2025, to fill the Senate seat vacated by JD Vance when Vance resigned to become the vice president of the United States. Before being officially sworn into the U.S. Senate on January 21, 2025, Husted served as the state's lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives.
Sherrod Brown lost his bid for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate in November 2024, when Republican businessman Bernie Moreno flipped his seat to Republican control and ended his 18-year tenure.
"Sherrod Brown is still the same old Sherrod Brown that voters in the state of Ohio decided needed to retire in 2024 and elected our fine senator, Bernie Mareno," says Stover.
Once voters remember where Brown stands on issues like abortion, immigration and election security, he thinks they will elect Husted to continue serving as their senator.
