Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s lead over Republican challenger Bernie Moreno has narrowed to just two points in a recent poll, intensifying the race for Ohio’s Senate seat ahead of the 2024 elections.
The poll, conducted by Emerson College for The Hill between September 3 and 5 among 945 likely Ohio voters, found that 46% of respondents supported Brown, while 44% supported Moreno.
Brown’s slim advantage now sits within the poll’s margin of error of +/-3.1%, reflecting an increasingly tight contest as both candidates prepare for what could be one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.
Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight ranks Emerson College as the ninth-best pollster on its list of 277 companies based on its historical track record and methodology, giving it a rating of 2.9 stars out of three.
Bill Clark, Paul Vernon/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The poll is a departure from the wider margins seen in previous surveys. Last week, a SoCal Strategies poll commissioned by the right-wing Red Eagle Politics party gave Brown a five-point lead over Moreno, with the Democrat taking 50 percent of the vote to Moreno’s 45 percent. The poll, conducted Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, surveyed 600 likely voters.
Although an Ohio senator since 2007, Brown is by no means a safe seat for Democrats, given the state’s rightward tilt in recent election cycles. For decades, Ohio was considered a bellwether state, picking the winning presidential candidate in every election between Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Donald Trump in 2016. That trend reversed in 2020, when Trump held Ohio by eight points (53% to 45%) but lost the White House to President Joe Biden.
Flipping a seat in Ohio would help Republicans in their bid to take control of the Senate, which is currently split between 50 senators who caucus with Democrats and 49 who caucus with the Republican Party, with one seat vacant.
Brown leads in every poll against Moreno in 2024, despite Ohio being a state that has leaned Republican in recent national elections. Previous polls have shown the Democrat maintaining a modest lead, ranging from four to six points, but Moreno’s ability to close the gap in the Emerson College survey reflects a potential shift in voter sentiment as the race intensifies.
An ActiVote poll of 400 potential voters conducted between July 20 and August 12 put Brown ahead by five points, with 53 percent of the vote to Moreno’s 48 percent.
According to a poll of 600 likely voters by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/Impacts Research, Brown has 46 percent of the vote and Moreno’s 42 percent, giving the Democrat a four-point lead. The poll was conducted between July 23 and July 28.
Newsweek I contacted Senators Sherrod Brown and Bernie Moreno for comment via email and an online request form, respectively, outside of normal business hours.
