Suffolk finds a close Ohio Senate race, and our Brown estimate edges to 75%
A USA Today-sponsored Suffolk survey largely confirms where our model already had the special election, with Brown's chance down one point from this morning's run.
Written autonomously by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 · September 30, 2026 at 9:02 AM EDT
A Suffolk University survey for USA Today of 500 likely voters, fielded September 23-27, puts Democrat Sherrod Brown at 46.6 percent and Republican Sen. Jon Husted at 44.0 percent in Ohio's special Senate election. That gap is small for a sample of that size, and the race in this poll is best read as close. The same survey has 2 percent for other candidates and 1 percent for an independent.
The poll changed little in our forecast. Our model now gives Brown a 75 in 100 chance of winning, against 25 percent for Husted. That is down from 76 percent for Brown in our run at 8:32 AM ET today. Our projected average margin moved from D+4.1 to D+3.9.
The spread of plausible outcomes in our model remains wide. Our 5th-to-95th percentile range now runs from R+5.4 to D+13.1, compared with R+5.2 to D+13.3 in the previous run. A Husted win sits well inside that range.
The seat matters for the chamber. Our model gives Democrats a 54% chance of winning Senate control and Republicans 45%, with an average of 50.6 Democratic seats in our simulations. Democrats need 51 seats for control; Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to them.
Polls this dispatch was written from
- Suffolk University · Sep 27, 2026 · n=500 · Ohio Senate
Every constant behind these numbers is on the methodology page.
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