Ohio's Working-Class Voters Could Decide Two Big Races

A phone kept ringing at the Mahoning County Republican Party office. Volunteers piled in to grab yard signs off tables and walls. Just days before, President Donald Trump had visited the Mahoning Valley to rally support for Republican candidates. This corner of northeast Ohio — once a safe bet for Democrats — could now decide who wins two major races this November: one for U.S. Senate and one for governor.

For most of the last century, the steel towns of the Mahoning Valley were a reliable win for Ohio Democrats. Cities like Youngstown were built on steel mills, and labor unions made sure workers voted Democratic. But Trump changed all that starting in 2016, flipping many of these same workers to the Republican side. Now, with two tight races on the ballot, the valley's voters matter more than ever.

Recent polls show both races are very close. A New York Times-Siena University poll found former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown leading Republican Jon Husted 49 percent to 46 percent in the Senate race. In the governor's race, Democrat Amy Acton leads Republican Vivek Ramaswamy 49 percent to 45 percent. Experts say the Mahoning Valley could tip both races one way or the other.

Henry Nickel works at the front desk of the local Republican office, but he is not who you might expect to find there. He is gay, his husband immigrated from El Salvador and was once undocumented, and Nickel is a former city council member from California who flew to Ohio in his own small plane. He has knocked on about 800 doors across the valley talking to voters, and he keeps hearing Republicans who plan to vote but won't say which candidates they support.

Nickel is worried about what he calls an 'enthusiasm problem' among Republican voters. He says Senator Husted, who was appointed to the Senate in 2025, does not excite the base the way Trump does. When voters say they don't want to vote for Husted, Nickel has a ready answer: 'Then you're voting for Brown.' He wants Republicans to understand that skipping a race still has real consequences.

Tom McCabe, the chairman of the county Republican Party, sees things differently and says he is not worried. He points out that more than 350 people showed up to see Ramaswamy at the local county fair, and large campaign signs sold out in a week. He notes that in 2022, JD Vance carried Mahoning County by about three points over Tim Ryan, a well-liked local congressman. Still, McCabe admits voters are frustrated by high gas prices and the ongoing war with Iran.

Paul Sracic, a retired political science professor from Youngstown State University, explained how deeply Democratic this valley used to be. 'Labor unions brought the Democratic Party to the area through the steel mills,' he said, adding that Republicans once hoped for just 35 percent of the vote here and called that a success. Then Trump arrived and flipped the script in 2016 — Trumbull County voted Republican for the first time in decades, and Trump nearly won Mahoning County too. By 2024, Trump carried Mahoning County by about nine points, a massive change from 2012 when Barack Obama won it by 28 points.

Sracic sees weaknesses in all four candidates. Husted is not well known outside Columbus and is not seen as a strong MAGA Republican, while Brown has lost his strongest argument against trade deals after supporting a new trade agreement in 2019. Ramaswamy has never held any government office, which is very unusual for a governor's candidate, and some voters find him arrogant. Acton, meanwhile, is linked in many voters' minds to the COVID-19 school shutdowns of 2020, and she has refused to debate Ramaswamy.

Jobs and the economy are on voters' minds, even though Ohio's statewide unemployment rate hit a record low of 3.3 percent in August. The Mahoning Valley tells a harder story: Trumbull County had the state's highest unemployment at 5.1 percent, and Mahoning County was second at 5.0 percent. Ohio's manufacturing sector lost 2,700 jobs between March 2025 and March 2026, and rising fuel and fertilizer costs are making it a tough year for farmers too.

Chris Anderson, who chairs the Mahoning County Democratic Party, is blunt about what he thinks happened here. 'Folks got conned by a con man,' he said of Trump, pointing out that a 2017 rally promised factory jobs would return — but plants kept closing, and GM shut down the Lordstown factory. He says people are now paying more for everyday items they were promised would cost less, including gas still near $4 a gallon even after the state briefly cut its gas tax. 'The best way to protest Donald Trump coming,' Anderson said, 'is to go vote.'

Anderson is also critical of his own party's national leaders. He believes Democrats lost the valley because the national party sent messages that only worked in big cities, while local candidates like Brown built real connections with working-class voters. 'You have to give local organizations and state organizations the ability to talk to their own voters,' he said. He hopes a Democratic win in November will finally push Washington to listen to communities like the Mahoning Valley.

Both parties now agree on one thing: the Mahoning Valley is the key to winning Ohio. Democrats once needed it to win the state; now Republicans do too. The biggest question heading into November is whether Trump's new Republican converts will show up to vote when Trump himself is not on the ballot. That answer will likely decide both the Senate and governor's races — and may reveal something bigger about where Ohio, and the nation, are headed.