Sherrod Brown is projected to make a return to the US Senate after defeating Ohio Republican Jon Husted, flipping a seat for the Democrats two years after losing his re-election bid in the state.
Mr Brown, 73, narrowly lost to Republican senator Bernie Moreno in 2024, having spent more than three decades representing Ohio in the House and Senate. His projected victory represents a significant gain for Democrats as they seek to take control of the Senate.
Mr Husted, 59, was appointed to the seat last year after it was vacated by JD Vance, who became vice-president. The former Ohio lieutenant governor and secretary of state was defending the seat for the first time but remained relatively unknown during the campaign.
The contest was fought against a backdrop of weakening support for President Donald Trump, with the source material citing the war in Iran, high fuel prices and wider cost-of-living pressures. Mr Trump carried Ohio by more than 10 points in 2024, while Mr Brown’s defeat that year came by a margin of four points.
Mr Brown sought to revive his established working-class appeal in Ohio, while Republicans portrayed his long career in Washington as evidence that he was effectively the incumbent. He made artificial intelligence data centres and energy costs central to his campaign, describing Mr Husted as “the face of data centers”.
The result is especially notable because no senator since 1988 has successfully returned to the upper chamber after losing a re-election campaign. It also underlines the growing competitiveness of races in states that Mr Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024.
Ohio had been viewed as the Democrats’ most accessible target among those states, with the president’s winning margin smaller than in Iowa, Kansas and Alaska. By election night, however, those contests too appeared to be within Democratic reach.
