Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutuel, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

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At OHEA.ORG.

Millions of people made it out to the polls on Election Day to cast their vote for several statewide and local races that can play a pivotal role in policymaking at Congress.

And in the Statehouse.

Ohio's next United States Senator Jim G. Republican candidates win big on election night, sweeping every statewide race and picking up even more seats in the General Assembly.

Political experts discuss what the election results mean for Ohio.

It's all this week on the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Andy Chao sitting in for Karen Kasler.

More than 4 million Ohioans cast a vote for the November general election either by voting early or going to their local precinct on Election Day.

Voters were lined up throughout the halls of this church in Westerville.

That included Joanna Mahoney, who says voting is an important responsibility that allows citizens to be heard.

I'm glad to have the opportunity to live in a country where we have a choice to vote instead of just being told, period.

And for women, this is extremely important.

Because women are not considered in the same value standard as men.

To Nathaniel Bottcher, who served in the US Army.

Voting takes on a special meaning.

You know, part of what we were doing was trying to maintain our countrymen's ability to have a say in what goes on.

And so that's why I try to carry on now and go every year and make sure I have my say.

There is a steady flow of voters making their way to CenterPoint Church in Ghana on Election Day as well.

Shante Meadows is a social worker who feels a personal connection to the issues that are represented on the ballot through the candidates.

Most issues are all related to what I do relate to people.

There's a lot going on in the world, so we all matter and we all have to have our voice heard.

While several polling locations reported large crowds on Election Day, the overall voter turnout was slightly lower than the numbers in 2018 when turnout was nearly 56%.

That's despite breaking the early voting record for a race for governor or U.S. Senate.

When the votes were tallied, Republicans won big in Ohio, as they have in midterm elections going back to 1994.

With the exception of a Democratic wave year in 2006.

The GOP swept the Ohio Democrats in every statewide race from the top of the ticket on down statehouse correspondent Joe Ingles.

Has the details.

A few hours after other statewide races recalled Republican J.D.

Vance Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist was named winner of the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Rob Portman, Vance beat Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan by about seven points, but by 210,000 fewer votes than Donald Trump won Ohio two years earlier.

Vance told Republicans gathered at the statewide election night headquarters in Columbus that he's honored to go to D.C.. We've been given an opportunity to do something, and that's to govern and to govern to make the lives of the people of Ohio better.

That's exactly what I aim to do.

And because of you, I get a chance to do it.

Vance took on a unifying tone during his acceptance speech, never mentioning the endorsement of former President Trump.

He thanked Ryan for a hard fought campaign, and he said he plans to be a senator who represents all Ohioans.

Whoever is in the majority, whatever the president looks like, we have a very simple job to do.

It's to go to work every single day and fight for the people of Ohio, fight for our workers.

Fight for our families.

Vance noted that the GOP incumbents, who also won, helped him in this race that proved tougher than expected.

Meanwhile, in his home town in the Mahoning Valley, Tim Ryan was thanking his supporters saying he fought hard and gave it all he had.

But in the end, he said voters had spoken.

And Ryan, who no longer has a seat in Congress, either said he had the privilege to concede this race to Vance because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election, you concede and you respect you respect the will of the people.

Yes, right.

We can't have a system where if you win, it's a legitimate election.

And if you lose, someone stole it.

That is not how we can move forward in the United States.

Ryan talked about how important it is to come together to work for the common good.

And he said in his call to concede, he told Vance he should focus on helping working Ohioans.

He asked the crowd to keep fighting for change.

And it's the ordinary people who have to do something extraordinary.

And the challenges are going to be great as we move forward.

They're going to be great See some of the people that are going to walk into the United States Senate.

We got a lot of work to do in the United States of America.

And this family pledges and whatever step is next for us that we will continue to be in this fight because it's too important.

It's too important.

Yeah.

While Ryan did lose the three counties in the Mahoning Valley, which had been his congressional district he was the closest Democrat who came to winning.

He won eight counties Athens, Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Lorain, Lucas, Montgomery, and Summit.

But former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Peper notes Nan Whaley, who as the candidate for governor was at the top of the statewide Democratic ticket, only won three Athens, Cuyahoga and Franklin.

There are counties that Democrats were winning 15 years ago that were simply not winning.

Democrats are going to struggle having to win seven or eight counties out of 88 by enough to win.

Obama won 22 counties in 2008 and 17 counties in 2012.

Like Ryan Whaley didn't win the county where she was elected.

She served two terms as mayor of Dayton and Montgomery County, which last voted for a Democrat for governor in 2010. Pepper, who left as party chair after Republicans won big in Ohio in 2020 says Democrats need to focus on their message and raise enough money that they'll be able to get it out to rural areas.

And until that happens, he says it will be tough for Democrats to win statewide.

But it's notable that the turnout in the major urban counties of Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton was below the statewide average of about 52% Joe Ingles, Statehouse News Bureau.

The Republican sweep in every statewide race will have a ripple effect in several areas of Ohio policy making on issues like abortion at the Statehouse and challenges to redistricting in the Supreme Court.

A panel of experts, including Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler, gathered for a Columbus Metropolitan Club forum to talk about the impact of the 2022 election.

The panel included Bradley Smith, professor of law at Capital University's Law School and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, and Wendy Smooth, a professor in the Department of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Department of Political Science for Ohio State University.

And the panel was moderated by W OSU Chief Content Director Mike Thompson.

What is your biggest takeaway from from this year's election?

I think that's really significant that Ohio's congressional delegation shrunk by one from 16 to 15.

And yet Democrats added to their delegation because there were four Democrats.

Now there are five.

Of course these maps that these candidates were running on were ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

So the question then becomes will they be changed significantly before 20, 24?

Because the Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission will have that opportunity to do that.

But I think overall, while there were lots of polls that suggested that Tim Ryan would do well against J.D.

Vance, and he did in a state that Donald Trump won in 20, 16 and 20, 20, anybody who thought that the results weren't going to be what they were has not been looking at Ohio's results over the last well, really since 2010.

But actually you could go back to 1994 the midterm elections.

Then that's when Republicans really started dominating these midterm elections, when governors are elected with the exception of 2006 because that was a Democratic wave year rally you take away I tend to look at things a little bit more systematically rather than thinking about sort of the partizan results which I think were you know pretty surprising to most experts who are at least being honest this morning as we go across the country.

What has struck me so far and it's early so things could change but we haven't heard a whole lot of allegations from either party alleging various fraud and so on.

There's Carrie, like the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, has expressed some concern about that issue there.

But I don't know that that's going to have any legs at all.

And of course, if she wins her race, then those concerns will probably go away.

And that's still up for grabs.

But I think that's been at least so far.

And the other thing I think it's simply shows, however, though, is that there is a dug in partizanship.

When you when you look at candidates who are as weak as Herschel Walker in Georgia or John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and you just see that they're their voters for that party will not be moved off that candidate in any significant numbers.

You know, I don't think that would have been the case 20 or 30 years ago.

I don't think those candidates would have been whatever I say, competitive.

So so to me, that that continuing divide is a very, very important issue.

But I'm at least pleased that so far the initial response has been relatively sanguine about accepting the results all around pretty.

Sure.

So definitively, Ohio is no longer purple.

We can talk about ourselves in that way anymore.

And it's going to be really interesting going forward when we think about Ohio's reputation of being able to predict or be the icon for presidential politics going forward.

So we're going to be in the midst of a really big identity shift as a state.

I think it's going to impact the traffic that we see through the state in the next presidential election because we have definitively kind of defined who we are One of the things that I'm really looking forward to in the next few days is to really dig down in terms of who has done what turnout looks like across the electorate.

I'm really curious about young people and turnout.

We have a lot of interest in terms of whether young people would turn out nationally based on some of the issues, particularly young women.

In terms of interest in the Dobbs decision, Also thinking about always the role of race in American politics in terms of where the ground game mattered, and particularly Georgia, in my mind, I feel like I'm having a relapse of 20, 20, and I hear Ray Charles flowing in my head in terms of Georgia, Georgia, Georgia on my mind.

I think we'll have that through Thanksgiving in terms of really determining what we'll know about the U.S. Senate and I want to say again that that shout out for a following young voters and our students here from the Ohio State University So glad to see you engaged in this conversation as well.

We can't do enough to advance civil discourse among our young people.

And so we're glad to see our students here today.

And I'm watching to see how young people 18 to 29 participated yesterday.

And then one final thing I'll say is I feel like we've tempered down a little bit of the high stakes rhetoric coming out of last night.

I think we're going to have to have different conversations about the nature and state of democracy, because I think the American people told us last night that they are ready to think about democracy as a sound investment.

And I think that's part of what we saw last evening.

All right.

Let's start with the big race here in Ohio.

That was the race for U.S. Senate.

It looks like J.D.

Vance is going to win somewhere between six and 7%, five, six or 7% over Tim Ryan.

Wendy, let me start with you.

Tim Ryan ran in aggressively unique campaign.

He did not try to cater to the Democratic base.

He went for the middle.

He went for the white working class voter He went he was the Trump Democrat, as he was called.

Did it.

Did it lead to his loss or did it keep the margin within ten points?

The great question.

We're going to have to dig a little deeper.

I've got to look at turnout in terms of what happened among the Democrats, the Demo cratic base, and particularly I'm interested in our major urban areas and whether Tim Ryan's strategy was a strategy that would mobilize black and Latino voters and whether or not that's the strategy that the Democratic Party can continue to maintain and experience any success in doing so.

So some of the rhetoric that we started to see out of the Ryan campaign, particularly in the latter days as it really ramped up, was really the kinds of messaging that certainly could appeal to more conservative Democrats.

But when you look at the actual base of the party, those were demobilizing messages for many Democrats.

And so I'd like to see what turnout actually looks like in particularly in urban areas.

Karen, as I watched the results last night, J.D.

Vance had, quote, taken the lead, going ahead in the polls and then but there was still a lot of votes left in Franklin County, Cuyahoga County and Hamilton County, the big urban areas.

But there wasn't enough for Tim Ryan to close that gap and overtake Vance again.

The turnout just wasn't there.

Right.

And I think there were a lot of people that might have been misled or confused or thinking other things when there were reports of long lines and there were some places that were saying they were lines that they'd never seen before, but yet turnout was actually lower this time than it was in 20, 18 by about 289,000 votes once you add in all the provisional ballots.

So I think that's a bit of a surprise and I'm wondering why there would have been lines in some places if turnout was indeed lower.

But I think when this point about breaking that down and seeing how the different demographics turned out and the gender breakdowns and things like that are really going to be interesting to watch.

So the other thing about that is you've got to if you're a Democrat, turn out the big county votes, you've got to turn out Hamilton County, Franklin County, the county.

You're probably going to win Athens County as many Republicans refer to it, the People's Republic of Athens.

And what happened?

You saw the results there.

Nan Whaley won three counties in Ohio.

She won Cuyahoga.

She won Franklin.

She won Athens.

That's not enough.

And the presidential candidates have won Ohio.

Barack Obama, for instance, have won seven or eight counties.

And so that's the challenge.

I think Democrats have to do not only try to reach out into rural areas and start winning back some of those votes because rural Ohioans used to vote Democratic, but also to make sure that you're bringing in your voters in or in those big cities.

And there's one thing that's just breaking now that's interesting.

Democrats have, I guess, an interesting opportunity in that Republicans will have a new chair because Ohio Republican Party Chair Bob Magic has announced that he is leaving.

And so that's an interesting note.

The day after he his ticket basically swept into all the offices they wanted to win and he is stepping down.

Interesting.

Bradley, there was a lot of ticket splitting.

I don't know exactly how many, but tens of tens of thousands of voters voted for Mike DeWine and also Tim Ryan.

It happened all around the state.

What do you make of that?

And was that does that lead credence to what Ryan strategy was that he wanted to get those ticket splitters?

Well, I think Ryan was about as good a candidate as the Democrats could have in Ohio.

I don't think there's any reason to think that you could have done better with a different turnout strategy, you know, other than Sherrod Brown, who runs a campaign similar to Ryan, one of the Democrats won a state race.

You know, this year.

The partizanship of Supreme Court nominees was on the ballot for the first time.

The Republicans ran the table with 60%.

I just don't think there's any reason to think that there is a better option for the Democrats and Ryan or a better campaign strategy than what he ran.

It's interesting, though, that Vance got about 53 54%.

It looks like Portman won that seat with 57 and then 58%.

And remember, it was that open seat when when Portman first ran obviously.

So and he ran against the popular Democrat named Democrat and he ran in a strong Republican year initially in 2010 but this was, you know a situation which the background conditions look strong for Republicans.

And in the end it took a great deal of spending from the great villain of the Trump wing of the party Mitch McConnell to help Vance pull out of some mid-summer doldrums.

Now maybe he would have anyway we just could never never be entirely sure of that.

But all of that suggests to me and when you look as well not just the Ohio governor's race but look at tickets putting in places like New Hampshire or I'm trying to think there are some other Georgia.

There's a lot of tickets.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Georgia would be another key.

It suggests the candidate quality matters and it matters a great deal and that there is still a very strong, vibrant, we might call it traditional Republican sort of vote in a lot of these states.

And I wanted to add with all of what Bradley just said, that Mike DeWine still ran almost ten points ahead of J.D.

Vance.

J.D.

Vance was at about 53%.

Mike DeWine was about 63%.

So that's interesting.

DeWine obviously had a coattails effect and brought along the four other executive officeholders the three Supreme Court justices.

But he may not have been as much of a boost to J.D.

Vance as maybe J.D.

Vance was hoping for winning the governor's race.

As predicted, was not close.

Stan Whaley, the first woman to run on a major party ticket for governor in Ohio.

Historic is that was she just never gained traction?

She never could raise the money she needed.

To get her message out there running against an incumbent governor as tough an incumbent governor who's been in office for 40 years makes it even tougher.

Is there anything she could have done differently to make the race closer?

You know, I think Nan Whaley did what Nan Whaley could do in a state like Ohio.

I think her message was she got stronger as the campaign season went forward.

Her speaking style, her the polished of her campaign was that much better in the latter days than we saw early on.

But it was really an uphill slug race.

And I think Nan Whaley did what what Nan Whaley could do.

And given Nan Wiley's record and the nature of Dayton as a city, her politics just are far different than the lie and share of voters across the state.

And that was clear from the from the results.

This, again, we are a red state and we have to remember, early in this campaign season, DeWine did look as strong as DeWine look by mid-summer.

Right.

So there were some questions about DeWine early on, but the state rallied around the Republican candidate as Republican voters.

And so the idea that Nan Whaley was going to be a very strong challenger, that we could have run any other candidate and had a different outcome for Ohio is very unlikely greatly that Mike DeWine took a lot of flak from members of his own party for his COVID rules early on.

And he never fully embraced Donald Trump, but he never really shunned Donald Trump, kind of ignored him.

He showed up at a rally the day before the election and he was on stage for exactly 50 seconds.

So it says Mike DeWine's, it worked.

He didn't anger the Trump folks so much that they didn't show up or perhaps even voted against him.

And he's still the Republicans, as when he said fellow mine.

But I think I saw that same dynamic in in both Georgia and Florida.

Florida being the other, in fact, a dominant, hugely bright spot for Republicans DeSantis, remember, won that race four years ago by less than one half of 1% after a recount last night, he won by 20 points.

That's an amazing shift of public opinion.

And DeSantis ran by adopting a lot of Trump's substantive policies, by being aggressive and decisive, but by avoiding the sort of, you know, personal insults, the, you know, the direct attacks.

He never suggested he didn't want anybody's vote.

He tried to get those votes.

And to a tremendous extent, he got them.

He ran by being very competent.

His response to the hurricane, his COVID response policies So there was just nothing, nothing there either within his party or among independents to really complain about it became a huge win.

And I think to some extent, DeWine did a bit the same.

Obviously, he angered a big part of the Republican Party.

But it's important not to overplay the size of that part of the party.

And I think we see that, by the way, on the on the Democratic side as well.

There's so much now noise in social media and Twitter and Facebook and all these kinds of things that it becomes very easy, even for skilled professionals and candidates to forget that those people are really a small part of the electorate, of the electorate.

And they're also a part that drives a lot of the fundraising, which makes makes it some candidates eager to appeal to them.

But again, you know, in the end, money can't buy votes.

It just gets a message out.

And if you're if you're given a message that nobody likes you, you're not going to you're not going to get there.

So I think what we see is that the candidates need to remember it's Americans are not really radical.

And having said earlier that, I think you see that division, that hardening division.

At the same time, I don't think most Americans think of themselves as hardcore laughter.

Hardcore, right.

Or anything that they view themselves as a bit more in the middle with with a lot going on.

So to me, the wind's victory, DeSantis victory.

People like John Sununu again running way ahead of his more aggressively Trump ish Senate candidate in his party show that there is a big middle there that people can grab and do very well with.

That's it for us this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau.

Thanks for watching.

Please check us out at State News, dawg.

You can follow the show.

Karen Kasler, Joe Ingles and myself on Facebook and Twitter and be sure to join us next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutuel, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at ADMET Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Right is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter right dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.