We just launched a new primary forecast for Ohio at RacetotheWH, with pure coincidence on the same day that Donald Trump decided to endorse JD Vance.
Before Trump got engaged, Vance’s campaign was in bad shape. He was polling in a distant third place, and our forecast showed his chances of winning the primary had fallen to 5%.
Trump is taking a pretty big risk here by supporting Vance. He’s trying to rescue a candidate in the final stages of the campaign with just twenty days left to go. If he had endorsed one of the top two candidates, Mandel or Gibbons, then they would have become the clear frontrunner.
Instead, Vance now has a 23% chance of winning the primary. We’ll be updating the forecast every day from now until the election, so we’ll have to see if his chances go up after new polling comes out over the next few days.
This could be another failed endorsement for Trump. Mo Brooks in Alabama fell from first to third, and a few days later Trump pulled his endorsement to save face. In Georgia, David Perdue continues to poll more than 10% behind Brian Kemp.
Our Ohio Senate Forecast also shows that Tim Ryan is very competitive in the general election. In fact, if he matchups up against JD Vance, the race would shift from Tilt R to Tossup.
This is our second primary forecast, along with Pennsylvania, which was released earlier this week. It’s far harder to predict primaries, so do take these projections with a grain of salt. However, in testing, it was able to correctly predict over 94% of 2020 Senate Primaries.