Ohio Senate odds: Brown holds at 68% as early votes top 1.2 million

Ohioans have now cast more than 1 million ballots, and Election Day is eight days away.

When I last wrote about this race on Oct. 15, Sherrod Brown sat steady at about 60% on Kalshi. Since then, President Trump has praised Sen. Jon Husted's body at three rallies, Husted has finally joked about it on Fox News, and former President Obama has rallied for Brown in Cleveland.

Through all of it, traders have kept moving toward Brown. Brown now sits at 68% to win, with Husted at 32%. Brown touched an all-time high of 70% last Thursday, and the market has traded more than $8.8 million.

After nearly two weeks of silence, Husted finally addressed Trump's comments on Sunday. Asked about them by Fox News' Aishah Hasnie, he played it for laughs.

"When I woke up the next morning after hearing that, I told my wife, 'I think I got to get down to the gym and keep up my reputation,'" Husted said. "So, I got to keep working out." He added that his wife is a marathon runner and "we're an athletic family."

The comments started in Youngstown on Oct. 12. Trump told the crowd that former NFL coach Jon Gruden had only recently told him Husted was an All-American defensive back at the University of Dayton, where the two were teammates. Husted helped the Flyers win the 1989 Division III national title.

"I don't do this with men very often," Trump told the Youngstown crowd. "I started examining his body," he said, because he hadn't known Husted was a great athlete. Then: "I looked at his ass. And then I looked at his hands." Pointing to Husted, Trump added, "He's got these, like, claws." (Watch the clip)

He has come back to it twice since:

Trump has also started crediting the remarks with moving the polls. In Kentucky, he claimed Husted had gained nine or 10 points since Youngstown. In Greenville, he went further: "He went from being ten points down to being two points up," he said.

No public poll backs that up. Brown's biggest recent lead was 8 points in a Fox News poll, not 10. The only recent survey with Husted ahead, ActiVote, has him up 0.4 points, and its median field date was Oct. 7, before any of the comments.

Before Sunday, Ohio Republicans had treated the comments as a running joke without spelling them out. At a GOP gathering in western Ohio the day after the Kentucky rally, speakers alluded to them only indirectly. Fox News host Jesse Watters joked about them on air.

Trump hasn't held an Ohio rally since Youngstown, but his two stops set the GOP's closing message: defend data centers, paint Brown as a Washington liberal, and warn Ohio what it loses if Democrats win.

Data centers. In Vandalia on Oct. 3, Trump defended AI data centers, the issue the NRSC itself called Husted's anchor. "You can't just turn them off. They'll go to China," he said. PBS reported the crowd went noticeably quiet during that stretch.

Brown as a radical. In Youngstown, Trump called Brown "the candidate of the Marxists, the communists" and urged voters not to let him "slither his way back into power." In Vandalia, he warned he'd be less willing to work with Ohio if Democrats win.

Husted's campaign is running the same attack, minus the president. "Ohioans fired Sherrod Brown once already, and they will retire him for good this November," a Husted spokesperson told FOX19. Husted has largely kept Trump out of his ads, but Trump's message is the one Republicans are running on. It's a split Obama mocked in Cleveland on Saturday.

Brown still leads every recent survey but one, by 3 to 6 points among likely voters. The polling average on Kalshi's market page has Brown at 48.3% and Husted at 44.0%.

The latest Fox poll shows Brown pulling crossover votes Husted isn't. While Husted wins 90% of Republicans, 9% cross over to Brown, compared with just 2% of Democrats who back Husted. Brown also carries independents by nearly two to one. Women favor Brown by 14 points, while men favor Husted by four, per NBC4.

Husted's campaign is betting some voters don't know who holds the seat. His ads call his opponent "Senator Sherrod Brown," and the BGSU poll found 25% of likely voters believe Brown is the incumbent. Among those voters, the race is nearly tied, 44.5% Brown to 43.3% Husted, according to BGSU political scientists David Jackson and Dominic Wells.

Brown has the campaign cash. Husted has the cavalry. Brown has raised $61.6 million to Husted's $19.2 million, according to FEC data reported by FOX19. Outside groups have flipped that math: $198.5 million has been spent to benefit Husted versus $94.7 million for Brown, per NBC4.

All told, AdImpact counts $431.7 million spent or reserved on ads, making it the second-most expensive race in the country. About $75 million more is still to come over the final two weeks, more than any other contest, according to CNN.

Ohioans have returned 1.2 million ballots, according to Secretary of State numbers reported by WLIO.

Democrats still outnumber Republicans among early voters. But University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven expects the Democratic early lead to shrink on Election Day, but said Democrats are seeing "outperformance of Democratic baselines."

Democrats brought out their closer on Saturday. Obama rallied with Brown and Amy Acton at Cleveland's Public Auditorium, where thousands filled a hall that seats about 10,000. (Watch the rally)

Obama spent most of his speech on Trump, blaming the Iran war for higher gas and diesel prices and calling the administration's actions "directly responsible for rising costs." He also mocked Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy for keeping Trump out of their ads while showing up at every Ohio rally: "Donald who?"

Brown mentioned Trump just once in a 20-minute speech. He named Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Trump as billionaires backing Husted, and closed with a shot at the pundits: "The national media's never gonna write off Ohio ever again."

Acton used her turn to hit back at Vivek Ramaswamy's ad featuring her estranged mother, calling him "a danger to my state." The ad has hung over the whole GOP ticket for a week. Husted said he "would not have run" it, and Ramaswamy fell to an all-time low of 19% in Kalshi's governor market.

Early in-person voting runs through Nov. 1, and absentee ballots must reach county boards by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3. Republicans are counting on that last stretch: the Ohio GOP's statewide bus tour is on the road, and the party has long relied on its voters showing up on Election Day.

Trump spent the weekend campaigning in other states, including a rally in Port Huron, Michigan. Whether he makes a third trip to Ohio, and whether he brings up Husted's body again, are the open questions for the final week.

Trump says his attention put Husted ahead. Husted is laughing it off. Neither the polls nor the market has budged toward him: Brown leads by mid-single digits, Democrats have banked about 60,000 more early votes than Republicans, and traders hold Brown near 70%. Can an Election Day surge close the gap?

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