Senate election on Tuesday, returning to the chamber two years after voters removed him from office. CNN projected Brown as the winner at 11:01 ET, with 88 percent of the estimated vote counted. He had received 48.5 percent, compared with 46.6 percent for Republican Senator Jon Husted.
The victory gives Democrats a Senate seat from a state carried by President Donald Trump by 11.2 percentage points in 2024 and restores Brown, a three-term former senator, to the office he lost that year. Ohio became the latest state to flip to Democrats, with the party's candidate leading by 1.9 points with 88 percent of the vote counted. Democrats had already flipped South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire and Texas, where James Talarico held a 20-point lead with 69 percent counted.
The winner will serve through January 2029, completing the final two years of the six-year term Vance won in 2022 before resigning to become vice president. Republican Governor Mike DeWine appointed Husted to the seat in January 2025. Ohio also became a crucial part of the Democratic route to Senate control.
Republicans entered the election with a 53-47 majority, so Democrats needed a net gain of four seats because Vance could break a 50-50 tie in favor of the GOP. David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political scientist who studies campaigns and Ohio politics, described the contest before the election as potentially “the most important Senate race in the country.” He told Newsweek in a pre-election phone call that the central force shaping the contest was dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and Republican control of state and federal government. National investment reflected that uncertainty.
By June, the campaigns had already spent $16 million on advertising, while outside partisan groups had pledged tens of millions more. Niven said at the time that “money flows in politics to uncertainty.” The total advertising expenditure later surpassed $500 million, according to reporting by the Columbus Dispatch, placing the contest among the most expensive Senate races in the country. Ohio once occupied a central place in presidential elections.
Its combination of agriculture, manufacturing, large cities and smaller industrial communities made the state broadly representative of the national economy. Trump won Ohio by about 8 points in 2016 and 2020, then expanded the margin to 11.2 points in 2024. Brown nevertheless continued to run ahead of his party’s presidential ticket.
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