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The rules
The elections desk · the 2026 midterms

The Count

All the outlet's midterm coverage lives here: Senate, House, governors and the race rooms. Every call carries a printed number, months early, and gets graded against the certified result.

Election day
3 Nov 2026
Countdown
 
Senate control
R 82%
Record
53 locked / 0 graded
Senate roomOhio · Senate · Class 3 (special) · 3 Nov 2026Lean R

The Ohio room

Why this seat

An appointed senator facing voters for the first time. The model applies no incumbency term to an appointment, which is why this rates closer than Ohio's recent statewide results would suggest.

State of the field

Husted defending an appointment; the Democratic field is forming around a single well-funded name.

The test

Ohio holds if the appointment is treated as incumbency by voters. It moves if the seat is read as an open one and the state's 2018 midterm pattern repeats.

The seat, by the modelSame coefficients as every other seat
Model terms for this seat
2024 certified marginR+11.2
2024 margin × 0.788.7
Midterm drag+5.6
Appointed incumbent1.0
Expected marginR+4.1
Seat uncertainty (1σ)±5.5

Model call

74%

Republican gain

An appointed senator, a state that has moved right, and a midterm wind pointing the other way.

Nothing written on this page feeds that number. The method.

The seat’s figuresMonogram · no likeness
RepublicanJon HustedUnited States senator for OhioAppointed 2025, facing voters for the first time

Every slot on this board is a typographic monogram. It previously carried painted “house renders” of each sitting member; an audit found the renders were not reliable likenesses — one seat was captioned with a different person’s face entirely — so the class was withdrawn rather than repaired face by face. A wrong face under a right name is a fabrication, not a style. No likeness returns to this board until every figure can be shown from a verified first-party image under identical framing. These are the figures the seat is about, not the full field.

Candidate ledgerNot open yet

No candidate ledger is published for this seat. A ledger requires a completed first-party source pass — every candidate's own published policy pages, read on the same day, under identical headings and an identical word budget. Until that pass is done, printing a partial board would rate the campaigns that publish against the ones that have not, which is the asymmetry the Standard exists to prevent.

See a finished ledger — Georgia
Other rooms
Every open room →