Diane Cunningham Redden

OHIO ELECTION FINAL MODEL & PREDICTION This is the final forecast. The model is the same one explained last week: SOS files matched to the voter file, county history, canvass data, no polls. This time with a prediction, not four scenarios. The Final Early Vote: The SOS file of Nov 2 runs through Sunday, Nov 1. Ballots returned: 1,728,899, which is 1,103,252 in person and 625,647 by mail. By party label: Democrats 27.3%, Republicans 25.3%, unaffiliated 47.2%. Margin of everything returned: D+2.0. About 104,000 mail ballots are still out and lean R+2 by label, so the early vote will finish at about 1.78 million ballots and D+2. It opened at D+18 after the first day and fell every week: D+14, D+8, D+5, D+4.5 on Oct 26, D+2 now. The final week of in-person voting, the heaviest of the cycle at 466,105 votes, ran R+4.2, and every one of its seven days went Republican by label, ending at R+7.5 on Sunday. The cumulative in-person vote went from D+17.8 on day one to D+1.5. Where the canvass data places the early vote: D+2 is the label margin, not the vote. The canvass data from 50 counties with full splits in both 2022 and 2024 shows how much more Democratic Ohio’s early voters run than their counties as a whole, and applying that history to each county’s 2024 result puts this year’s early vote at D+6.5 in projected votes. The 2022-only reading is D+10.9, the 2024-only reading is R+2.4. The D+6.5 blend is the number the forecast carries forward. Why Election Day is projected at R+8: Election Day cannot be observed, so it has to be projected. The projection is R+8, and it rests on two things: The canvass data: In every county with a canvass on file, in every race, the Election Day vote has been more Republican than the early vote: 363 county-races out of 363. Brown’s 2024 Election Day was R+11, Ryan’s 2022 was R+13, the 2024 presidential was R+20, and the 2018 wave produced an Election Day near R+8. What the final week showed: The early vote closed with seven straight Republican in-person days, and the voters still to come run about R+17 by label against the early vote’s D+2. Nothing in the final week points to Republicans staying home on Nov 3. R+8 is still the generous end of the range. It matches the best Democratic environment in the data, it is 3 points better for Democrats than what Brown faced, and an ordinary Ohio Election Day is closer to R+12.8. R+8 is the most conservative number the data can defend after the final week. The Prediction, Election Day R+8 With the early vote at D+6.5 in projected votes and Election Day at R+8, the model lands at R+2.9. Two-party, that is Republicans 51.5%, Democrats 48.5%, on 5.08 million votes. Democrats carry 11 of 88 counties: the eight large Democratic counties plus Athens, Delaware and Wood, the last two by about a point. My assessment on the data, Republicans win by about 3 points. The spread between Vivek & Husted will be small, maybe a point. Other turnout options, for reference: At R+6, the floor, the model gives R+1.6. At R+10, R+4.2 and 9 counties for Democrats. At R+12.8, the ordinary case, R+6.0 and 8 counties. Across every calibration of the early vote, the R+8 result runs from R+1.4 to R+6.0. The only combination in the whole matrix that comes near a tie is the most Democratic reading of the early vote paired with the weakest Republican Election Day in a decade, and even that is R+0.1. The early vote opened at D+18, closed at D+2, and its last seven days all went Republican. If Republicans show up and vote on Election day, as they always have, the data projects a big RED day.