In the closely-watched campaign for U.S. Senator in Ohio, one pollster just found Republican challenger Bernie Moreno up two points over incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown, 48 to 46 percent.
This poll, conducted by Scott Rasmussen on behalf of Napolitan News Service, surveyed 781 likely voters between September 18-20.
Democrats currently hold control over the U.S. Senate with 51 seats. As of today, it looks as though the Republican Party will win control in 2025. Two seats held by Democrats in the red states of Montana and West Virginia are likely turnovers, which will give the GOP a slim majority of 51 seats.
Ohio is one of the last counterintuitive U.S. Senate seats, where a left-wing Democrat has managed to win reelection in a red state, which Ohio has been for the better part of a decade. Brown is one of those Democrats who is a far-leftist in Washington DC, a vote Democrats can always count on. But when he’s back at home in Ohio, he’s suddenly something closer to a rock-ribbed Reagan Republican. Why the people of Ohio keep falling for this is beyond me.
We don’t know if this Scott Rasmussen poll is an outlier or signals a significant shift towards Moreno. According to the RealClearPolitics average poll of Ohio U.S. Senate race polls, Moreno has not led in a single poll and is currently 3.6 points behind.
However, there has been no polling of this race in three weeks, and a lot can happen in three weeks as voters begin to pay more attention.
“Moreno benefits from the fact that Donald Trump is leading the presidential race in Ohio by 11 points,” writes the pollster. “This race is a classic test as to whether or not a long-term and popular incumbent can overcome the political gravity of a state.”
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The pollster adds that the “Senate race is closer than the presidential because Brown is supported by 93% of Harris voters while Moreno is currently supported by 83% of Trump voters.”
Everyone’s waiting for the 2024 election to begin to break one way or another. We’ve never seen a race so tied up, one where a single point or even a half point could swing the whole enchilada. Let’s hope this poll is an early indicator of voters making up their minds in favor of sanity.
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